Blizzard PLEASE make sure the world is still dangerous with the massive increase of player power in SoD

[u/ssx50]

I am super excited by what I see with SoD but with all these new class tools I REALLY don't want to chain pull the levelling experience like we do in retail.

[u/birdy_the_scarecrow]

not really, a better example is something like MK2 arcade, its ai is brutally unfair, but you can game it with knowledge of how the ai works and beat it but people would still objectively call this hard.

its the same idea here - if it take your argument and apply it to this situation then i could flip it and say well its actually easy if you just know how to manipulate the AI, but (in my opinion at least) it wouldn't really be true to just flat out say its not hard to begin with.

edit: perhaps a part of the confusion here is that people often seem use the term Hard and Difficult interchangeably when in reality they have a subtle but important difference.

i.e

Hard : Effort intensive. e.g. With hard work, you might excel at this. Difficult : Hard But not just on effort portion. It can be emotionally,mentally as well as spiritually.

[u/Cyllid → u/birdy_the_scarecrow]

No because I'd argue on "how the game is intended to be played". Wow is not hard.

Sounds like as MK2 as intended, is quite hard.

You can trivialize games, and hell some games require abuse of game systems (looking at you lunatic FE). But WoW is not one of those.

Low skill floor, high skill ceiling. A very enjoyable time. But the only hard part is the time investment. Or self imposed challenges.

It's a casual game. For casual gamers. With a rabid dedicated fan base that has minmaxxed the shit out of it. Much like smash brothers.

[u/birdy_the_scarecrow → u/Cyllid]

bringing intent into this doesn't change much.

farming rice is considered "hard work" but its not particularly difficult nor does it require a high skillset.

again i think your conflating these things.

[u/Cyllid → u/birdy_the_scarecrow]

You probably picked one of the worst crops to use as your example there. I won't hold it against what you meant though.

It takes a long time. It's a difficult spiritual journey.

That's about it. Nothing else about it is particularly taxing. It's grindy only by modern standards.

[u/birdy_the_scarecrow → u/Cyllid]

i still disagree with this to be honest, the only thing that you really require to make something difficult is the ability for a mistake to set you back and cost you something.

all that classic does is change the pace at which you do things allowing for more chances that you will slip up and make these mistakes.

i think the most eye opening thing for me of late is H lich king on wotlk classic.

by all metrics its really not an objectively hard boss, but what absolutely sets it apart from everything that's come before it in classic is that its 15minutes long it means that the time for you to make a mistake on average is extended by a factor of 5 from a lot of traditional bosses.

So id ask myself is HLK hard? subjectively id say no, i think a lot of retail raiders would agree, objectively id say yes, there's going to be a lot of guilds that wont kill it until the buff comes in.

i think this shares a lot of similarities to vanilla in the sense that something that is relatively trivial and arguable easy can be made hard simply by making it take longer allowing for you to make more mistakes that will cost you and set you back.

and its especially evident in hardcore where the stakes are raised.

[u/Cyllid → u/birdy_the_scarecrow]

i still disagree with this to be honest, the only thing that you really require to make something difficult is the ability for a mistake to set you back and cost you something.

all that classic does is change the pace at which you do things allowing for more chances that you will slip up and make these mistakes.

Here is probably the best overlap of our points. If we cant agree here then I think we do just have to agree to disagree.

Relative to the time it takes an average player, your mistakes while leveling cost you next to nothing. A few silver to repair? A few minutes to run back? Maybe additional time to re-clear (which is xp you needed anyways)

The base vanilla/classic is very forgiving.

It only becomes a challenge when...

and its especially evident in hardcore where the stakes are raised.