Blizz needs to look back and see that they basically got it right with Ulduar. One lockout for each composition, optional hard mode fights (but not every fight), and one additional boss to reward those that beat the hard modes. Something for everyone, basically, without leaving anyone feeling slighted. I think the difficulty was spot-on, as well (after the bugs were fixed).
That screen with the collapsed bridge is immediately evocative of Shadow of the Colossus.
What the developer needs to understand, though, is that Team Ico's titles weren't just pretty to look at... they were rooted in solid gameplay with platforming, puzzles, combat and exploration rolled up in a highly-polished package.
They appear to have gotten the visuals and atmosphere right. Let's hope the gameplay matches.
As a Disc priest, I do PUGs a favor (in my mind) by only healing the DPS when they take unavoidable AOE damage. Blizzard already caters to bads enough, they won't get any more help from me. If they blunder into a patrol and the tank doesn't pick the adds up, I let them die. If they pull aggro, I let them die. If the Ret paladin doesn't bother to Cleanse the poison off himself, then I don't bother to heal the damage he takes from it. If he Cleanses himself but not anyone else, he gets no shields nor heals from me for the rest of the instance. When I see a death knight DPSing in Frost Presence, I don't waste a single mana point on the idiot (if he dies he can walk back to the group for all I care). I believe it's better to let them learn the hard way, since Blizzard's continuous tuning for the lowest common denominator has only made PUGs get worse as time goes by.
I figure the quality of the playerbase would greatly improve if more people were like me. If PUGs didn't tolerate bad play, puggers would be forced to l2play or not get groups at all (I suppose baddies could group with each other, but that would still be great for everybody else).
Even with fewer players doing Arena now, they continue to "balance" around it. Since GC has come out and said that they will *not* be instituting different rulesets for PVP and PVE, players that never Arena are doomed to suffer PVE nerfs to address PVP issues.
The saddest thing is, they aren't close to balancing PVP anyway. When the dominant factor for success is the character selection screen, you know the developers have already failed.
The evolution of raid design in Cataclysm
Jun 17th 2010 11:19PM (WoW)Preview: Journey
Jun 17th 2010 11:11PM (Joystiq)What the developer needs to understand, though, is that Team Ico's titles weren't just pretty to look at... they were rooted in solid gameplay with platforming, puzzles, combat and exploration rolled up in a highly-polished package.
They appear to have gotten the visuals and atmosphere right. Let's hope the gameplay matches.
Do tanks get the most out of PuGs?
Jul 26th 2009 4:16PM (WoW)I figure the quality of the playerbase would greatly improve if more people were like me. If PUGs didn't tolerate bad play, puggers would be forced to l2play or not get groups at all (I suppose baddies could group with each other, but that would still be great for everybody else).
Ghostcrawler speaks on Arenas and Battlegrounds
Mar 29th 2009 3:03AM (WoW)Even with fewer players doing Arena now, they continue to "balance" around it. Since GC has come out and said that they will *not* be instituting different rulesets for PVP and PVE, players that never Arena are doomed to suffer PVE nerfs to address PVP issues.
The saddest thing is, they aren't close to balancing PVP anyway. When the dominant factor for success is the character selection screen, you know the developers have already failed.