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  Next Hero Class: Lessons Learned |
09/21/09 10:50:37 AM
Patch 3.2.0a
Grumpa |
Given WoW's longevity, I assume we'll
see at least one if not more Hero classes. I hope Blizzard
considers - seriously considers - the current state of DKs before
putting together another Hero class.
I could list every single DK ability that received nerfs, either in
terms of losing damage or losing utility, but I hope to make the
post short so I'll just say it's just about every single
one. I think all of these nerfs (with the exception of some
utility ones) were legitimate in the sense that now DKs are much
more in line with the other clases.
My issue lies elsewhere. Either the design team made DKs OP on
purpose hoping to draw more people in during this expansion or they
were simply oblivious to how OP they are. I am concerned with both
of these.
Consider what happened: first, DKs dominated other classes for
months (with the exception of Paladins, the Jedi version of DKs).
That wasn't fun. As someone who plays a Warlock extensively I can
account for how crappy it felt to think of DKs as "warlocks in
plate with melee." Second, the DK players themselves (I assume) are
likely to feel bad about, again, having every single ability nerfed
over the last year.
Now, most players seem to just laugh at DKs because, well, when
your class is rolled over for half a year by class X, you want
class X nerfed to the ground. To me, however, this raises issues
because I don't want the classes I play to be in the same situation
months down the line.
So, the development team made DKs blatantly OP. I think any
reflective player will realize that being OP is ultimately BAD for
the class. I hope they do not do this for the next Hero class, or
really, any class in the next expansion. As a warlock player, I
am worried that the new shard system will result in warlocks being
OP for the first few months, bringing in the heavy nerfs and
community hatred. Here's hoping for otherwise.
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09/21/09 12:33:45 PM
Patch 3.2.0a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
We didn't make DKs intentionally OP.
While we want people to purchase Wrath of the Lich King, there are
lot of logical flaws with making one class purposely overpowered
(such as angering all the players who play the other nine
classes).
We made a few mistakes though, which I don't mind being up front
about.
1) We have learned a lot about making classes. With the DK, we
avoided some of the limitations other classes have. In the absence
of a lot of tradition, we gave the early DK an answer to almost
everything. While we definitely don't want to keep some of the crud
that has built up on the older classes, it turns out when you make
a new class without any of that junk before you scrub away the
older stuff, you get a class that is too powerful. Who would have
thought? The DK talent trees in particular had a lot of polish to
make sure there weren't too many just terrible talents (a few
haven't withstood the last year as well as others though).
To use just two examples, DKs can tank or PvP with any tree (though
not necessarily with the same talent allocation per tree), and DKs
have runes, a resource that is limited over short periods of time
instead of long periods of time, yet they also have runic power
that is quite useful in those periods where they may not have runes
available. In some ways, the DK benefited from having two
resources. (To be fair, there are weaknesses inherent in the rune
model as well which players who have never played a DK seriously
tend to overlook.)
2) As we started to work on the DK, we talked to PvP and PvE
players who were comfortable with the BC status quo. What I mean is
that raid leaders told us they didn't have room for DKs and Arena
teams told us they didn't see the need to replace anyone on their
team (especially a melee class without MS). Partially to counter
this attitude, we gave the DKs a lot of different tools to handle
different situations. They became a little too versatile. (Later,
part of the big buff / debuff overhaul was designed to fix the same
situation.)
3) I think this was one of those cases where we listened to the
community, especially the beta participants, a little too much.
Players had totally legit concerns about say the DK being too
kiteable or the DK tank not having an answer for physical damage or
whatever. Since we didn't have a ton of history or personal
experience to fall back on and couldn't analyze a lot of data from
live servers, we probably gave players the benefit of the doubt too
often and added or buffed abilities when we didn't need to. More
hardcore PvP and raid testing on the beta or PTR might help as
well, since a lot of those concerns were born of solo experiences
or pure speculation.
4) I think the fact that we showered the DK in blue items and
mounts (to help them level up to the Northrend content quickly) and
all of the effort we put into the start zone helped lead to the
perception of favoritism. It feels weird to suggest we should have
made the starting experience less epic to just to tone it down. On
the other hand, maybe there was a way to communicate our goals
better. A lot of players took the "hero class" thing (which really
only meant that we modeled them after the Warcraft III heroes) to
mean they should be overpowered, which was never our intent.
5) I think we just had bad luck with at least two of the DK
systems. Their plate + spell damage combo just happened to be quite
lethal in the early Arena seasons where 2s were predominant and
burst damage was too high. Their cooldown-based tanking just ended
up being really effective against a lot of the boss encounters. We
didn't set out for either of those situations to be too uber. If
the DK had been a caster, I don't think casters would have
dominated the earlier seasons. If health pools had grown more (as
they did going into BC) and we had been harsher about mana regen,
then perhaps tanking wouldn't have been so overshadowed by giant
boss hits that could only be survived by chaining say IBF and Bone
Shield.
Ultimately, I wouldn't view the introduction of the new class as a
failure by any stretch. There are a lot of players who love their
DK even when she isn't overpowered. Adding a new class is a
challenge, which we knew going in, and the DK didn't disappoint in
that regards. It has taken a lot of iteration to kind of catch the
death knight up all of the years of iteration on the existing
classes, and I'm sure they're not done yet. It's also a good reason
not to introduce a new class every expansion. :)
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09/21/09 01:32:46 PM
Patch 3.2.0a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
You didn't forsee that giving a class zero weaknesses was going to
be overpowered?
It's not that simple. We designed around a lot of complaints that
players have had over the years, which have often focused on their
class's weakness. To use just one example, rage-based classes
always suffered from lack of rage when in tank gear and spec but
not being targeted. DKs don't have that problem. It's not that
"rage starvation" was an interesting weakness designed into the
warrior and druid class. It's just the way the mechanic
worked.
But an even bigger factor is that, the DK is efficient in that
nearly all of their spells or talents do something meaningful. Even
the tanking talents tend to offer a dps boost as well. I don't even
think the DK is without weaknesses. They were always very
vulnerable to dispels in PvP for instance (unless they were
literally just spamming Icy Touch), it's just that shamans weren't
that prevalent early on.
That's a big difference from saying "Hey, let's make an overpowered
class," but I suspect you knew that and were just going for the
good sound bite. :)
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09/21/09 01:54:04 PM
Patch 3.2.0a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
What I always thought was odd about DKs is one of the original
blurbs about it was 'anti-caster,' and yet it never really managed
that function with any noteworthy effectiveness. (And of course, I
was thankful, since we were already struggling.)
We were really carving off a niche for DK tanks as anti-caster,
maybe the kind of thing you'd use against Hydross. We later decided
that was too narrow a niche and that having major tanking niches at
all wasn't a smart design.
Q u o t e:
A lot of players (including me) just wanted a sarcastic way to
remark that the class was overpowered. "Hero class, bro" did nicely
for that.
I don't think that many players were dumb enough to actually think
that you purposefully overpowered DK's simply because it was a hero
class.
I think a lot of players did that. Sadly, I don't think they all
got the joke. :(
Q u o t e:
As I said uptopic: it's much easier to paint a masterpiece from a
blank canvass after years of practice than to go back to an old
picture and polish it up.
Yeah, good summary. That doesn't mean we won't go back
though.
Q u o t e:
I'm currently more peeved that DKs still remain very polished while
certain classes (cough warrior) seem to be holding on to the "crud"
that Dks are free of. Yes, jealousy, my class is designed like a
turd and this new class is designed like a god. The fact that devs
seem fine with it like this is what peeves me. They claim the
"crud" is just part of class mechanics and flavor.
It would be trivial to produce DKs who are just as unhappy with
real or perceived “crud” about their class. I saw a
couple of posts like that above this one. Every class has players
who think theirs doesn’t get enough attention.
Q u o t e:
GC, if you can comment, since the thread's title is pretty generic:
do we need another "hero" class? Or another class at all? I
understand from a business standpoint that it really gave the game
something fresh for old and new players alike to sink their teeth
into, but was the fallout worth it to have another tank, another
dps, more gear, more homogenization, more PvP frustration,
etc.
WoW doesn’t need new classes. It doesn’t need new races
either or even new spells for current classes. You could just keep
playing the game over and over, leveling different alts and seeing
how they do in Arena or Icecrown. But for a lot of players who have
stuck with the game for several years, seeing something completely
new can breathe new life into the game for them. There is a ton of
anti-DK sentiment in this thread, but I have spoken with plenty of
players who just love the way the class plays. The DK saved WoW for
them in a sense.
Q u o t e:
Except that it's not profitable to alienate your existing
playerbase who likes their old classes by making a new one so much
better. DKs have been an incredible headache to balance. It's taken
a good year to get the job done, if it is done.
I agree with the first part, but most of the devs here would
probably say paladins (all 3 kinds) have been a bigger headache to
balance this expansion, usually in the favor of the paladin. You
don’t need an answer to everything to be overpowered.
Q u o t e:
This. When I was looking over DKs at the beginning of WotLK, my
first thoughts were: "man, these guys have gotten better at
designing claasses". DKs were so....streamlinedcompared to
everything else. It made me want my class to be scrapped and
rebuilt from the ground up to bring it into line with what seemed
to be Bliz's new design philosophies and their planned direction
for the game.
Streamlined is a good way to put it, and why I tried to distinguish
“better at designing classes” from “overpowered
and without weakness.” Yes, that is what we want to do with
all classes. Some are closer than others.
Q u o t e:
Rotation for unholy DK's single target dps best cast
sequence
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=nocombat Icy Touch(Rank 5), Plague Strike(Rank
6), Blood Strike(Rank 6), Blood Strike(Rank 6), Scourge Strike(Rank
4), Unholy Blight(Rank 4),
was a staple DK macro and provided reasonable PVE DPS with 1
button. Of course a better player is going to get better DPS with a
proper rotation, but to say the class is to difficult is, well,
obtuse at best.
That macro caused a big sensation, but the reason it worked is
because it almost always defaulted to Icy Touch when stuff was out
of range, and Icy Touch did way too much damage early on. You would
have gotten a very similar effect with: /castsequence
reset=nocombat Icy Touch(Rank 5)
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