We can haz shinyness?
@TennisMikey I've talked before about how DPS didn't seem to affect population in this particular case.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 22, 2013@Aulper7 Great question and we don't have an answer to share yet. We are looking at more exciting visuals.
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Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 21, 2013
Firstly: Whoever you are, @Aulper7, you are incredible at asking questions that Ghostcrawler feels compelled to answer. If you taught a class, I bet hundreds of WoW tweeters and GC stalkers would sign up for it.
On topic: Despite the small number of words involved in this exchange, they provide us with what might be a telling insight into what the class design team (or at least GC) feels drives rogue population trends. Patch 5.2 seeks to increase rogues’ viability in competitive PvP (thanks to changes to an array of talent changes, Preparation going baseline and the PvP set bonus granting extra energy), as well as a little bit of their PvE utility (largely thanks to Smoke Bomb becoming a group damage-reduction cooldown). But if it’s not enough to offset our persistent unpopularity as a class, what can Blizzard try next?
It’s dangerous to read too much into a tweet, and GC did just talk briefly about how he feels they need to work on rogue rotations, but this suggests he’s looking at the idea that more aesthetic fixes might make a difference where mechanical changes have thus far failed to have an impact.
I greet this with skepticism. Yes, visuals are really important in a game as graphically oriented as WoW. And yes, rogues have long been one of the most “low-key” classes aesthetically — even among melee toons, who are traditionally less flashy by virtue of the fact that they can’t cast pretty, ranged spells that fly spectacularly through the air at their target. (Even the newly buffed Shuriken Toss does little more than make the rogue look like it’s a highly caffeinated cat batting at a string.)
But do people stop playing their rogue — or stop leveling it, or decide not to even roll one in the first place — because the spells they cast aren’t visually exciting enough?
I have a hard time believing that people would abandon or ignore a class for quite that superficial a reason. I’d think that deeper gameplay issues — such as the lack of any AoE ability prior to level 66 (though this will change with the Blade Flurry adjustments in 5.2, potentially making Combat feel required while leveling in dungeons) – would be more behind that kind of thing than a more abstract lack of “cool-looking stuff” involving our abilities.
Could I be sorely underestimating the power that visuals have in keeping players interested in a class?
I told you that a glyph where my enemies would fall in a spurt of blood when I shank ‘em from behind would be awesome! I interpret these tweets as proof.
Rfeann, could you quickly note how you define “aesthetics”? How you used it here makes me think we might be using it in two different ways, which means a lot of my recent posts here would be confusing.
/runs off to class
I’m a little worried I may have used it to mean different things in different posts. Generally I use it as a synonym for “how it interacts with my senses.” How it looks, how it sounds, how it feels to play it.
I realize there’s crossover here — there can be plenty of mechanical changes to the way the game is set up, or changes made to the way certain abilities work or how rogue/spec gameplay is designed, that can impact how it feels. So I may have accidentally muddied the water at times when using terms like “aesthetics” or “mechanics.”
I often think about this Extra Credits video when I use either of those words — though, again, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m using them correctly. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uepAJ-rqJKA
Alright, we’re both on the same track then. :)
I just use aesthetics as being all-inclusive of everything that goes into the player experience, including class/game mechanics.
It’d be interesting to see a similar analysis to what Cynwise did with warlocks to see where the drop off points are for rogues – do many start them and not finish them, or are they not getting rolled at all?
My thinking behind asking this is that the flashy visuals are something that will draw someone into playing a class but may not keep them playing if there are other issues involved. I know I looked with awe at all the nice and new minor glyphs that were announced with MoP. I played around with them but they aren’t that important any more.
On a side note, I think visuals can affect spec choice within a class though – I really enjoy playing Fire as a mage because Pyroblast visual is awesome – although that is tied to the power of the spell – I enjoy that you can send off this huge fireball and it does a whack of damage too (that said I don’t play my Mage that much!).
Cynwise actually did one that included rogues in December.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/11/are-rogues-a-dying-class/
Not sure if there was any follow-up investigation to test any of the hypotheses that came out of that discussion, though.
Ah yeah – it wasn’t directly in that article from Rossi but in the linked spreadsheet there was the levelling stats back in Cata for rogue population – they actually have the second highest starting range population – so that kind of debunks my theory that people aren’t actually rolling them to start with – but their plot of numbers decline looks pretty similar to lock just with a higher starting point.
But a high starting point might indicate that there is a large disparity between the expectation of the class and the implementation. Rogue is a fairly archetypal class, but compared to the other more archetypal classes – warrior, mage, priest (paladin too) – do they live up to the expectation going into it?
I’m not sure of the reasons though – it is hard to determine something that isn’t necessarily tangible.
Are people looking to play a highly stealthy class and yet finding stealth plays a relatively small role? Similarly – more classic attacks like backstab are barely usable in solo PvE content. A model of stealth like GW2 employs I think is a lot more in line with the classic idea (although I had trouble adjusting to way it was not toggle on/toggle off).
Is it the death-by-a-thousand-blows style of combat? You see that often coming up in forum threads – has the MoP changes exacerbated this in two ways:
1. A lot of the abilities have been watered down a bit (Ambush for example) and
2. The new ponies (monks) do work more along the lines of weak builders and very strong finishers.
Could also be that rogues are a favorite class for PvP twinking, or just fall into the category of “fun to log on and mess around with in a very non-serious manner until I feel like doing something else.”
Definitely lots of possibilities.
I don’t really feel empowered as a player while playing a rogue anymore though. But I have no idea if that’s just me or if it reflects a wider issue. I’ve spent too much time too close to the class to have a rational outlook on it.
“I don’t really feel empowered as a player while playing a rogue anymore though. But I have no idea if that’s just me or if it reflects a wider issue. I’ve spent too much time too close to the class to have a rational outlook on it.”
Hit the nail on the head right there! I’m in totally the same position.