Collision / Movement / Camera tests

So relieved!

I'm not sure if you've ever tried to make a game. There are tons of tools, and lots of quality solo-made games coming out every day. If you haven't though, let me tell you a secret. It's all the little bits and pieces that are the biggest killers.

We can talk all day about big sweeping mechanics, and crazy radical changes, but it's the little shit that you don't even notice that are often of huge importance. When was the last time you played super mario? I'm talking the old school mario. Now, tell me about the camera system in that game, I bet that never even crossed your mind before. Why? Because it was implemented so well that you didn't even notice it. Or how responsive were the controls? Things like this slide under the radar most of the time, and that's good. But when one of those (seemingly) basic systems breaks, or fails (think about the camera stopping in mario, but your character just runs off the side) it completely destroys the game.

That's what makes these core systems so important, that they have to be invisible.

Anyways, enough rambling about core systems, I built this over my weekend. I realize this doesn't seem like much, yet. But getting these core systems down in a tool i just started using yesterday has been a big task. I lost sleep over it! 

This is the very first baby steps towards an eventual handheld mobile game. I won't spill too many details here, but I figured it would be worth sharing.

If you have anything to say about it, or any thoughts, or if something breaks, let me know. Leave a comment or email me or whatever.

A Realm Reborn - The Limit Break

        This weekend, I spent a lot of time playing the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn beta test. All in all, I've really been enjoying the game. In addition to playing, I've got a boatload of notes to talk about in the upcoming days/weeks, and hopefully will be able to swing together some more updates in the upcoming weeks. For now though, I wanted to talk about a feature that really got me excited. The Limit Breaks.

        I was lucky enough to get to level 20 and the ability to jump into dungeons. This also means that I was able to get to use the limit break system. Anyone who's familiar with the final fantasy name has an idea about what the limit break system is, but for those of you who don't it's a system that builds up energy as you participate in combat, and eventually gives you access to a large and powerful ability, essentially releasing that stored energy. This has seen many different interpretations over the FF series, but is often seen as a fan favorite.

        With FFXIV being an MMO game, they've moved the limit break system to a group activity, which has some pretty exciting potential. Here are some quick details on the Limit Break system.

• About the new Limit Break System
• The new party battle system. When the gauge shared by the party fills, any of the party members can invoke it. Afterwards, the gauge becomes empty.
• The gauge is filled by hitting enemies with standard attacks, but will accumulate faster with "Fine Play," well-timed healing or blocks, which is judged by the system.
• The more you accumulate in your gauge, the Limit Breaks have several phases. If you remember back to the Limit Breaks of Final Fantasy VII.
• The same Limit Breaks have different effects depending on the player's job.
• You will be able to use a Limit Break to some extent even if your character level is low. A high level Limit Break can not be invoked if your character's level isn't high. The feature will be linked to their growth.

And a quick trailer courtesy of youtube if you want to SEE it :

        When first hearing about this system, I was really excited after having played FFXI and experiencing the Skillchain system. (Skillchain increased in power as people participated in sequential order. "player1 go now! -> player2 next!" etc.) While the skillchain definitely had it's faults, it allowed for a group to feel very cohesive and powerful. A group that time and execute a skill chain was given a huge boost in power and thus became a more effective group. I still remember the feeling of seeing a perfect skill chain carve out 75% of an extremely tough monster's health with a single hit, and feeling pride that it couldn't have happened without me. Was it required for the average player to use? Not really. Was it in your best interests to use? You betcha.

        So, naturally with FFXIV:ARR, this system is going to be improved on and made more awesome! Only not really. >< There are problems with the system as it sits now. Of course, this is BETA still, and being only level 20 I can't comment on the "high level limit break" point listed above, but based on what I've experienced of the system so far, I am quite let down.

1. My main concern with this is that the usage of a limit by any one player consumes the whole meter. Thus stripping away the whole "group" aspect of the system when it's used. Each role has a different potential break (healers do a big heal, damage does big damage, etc) which gives the system some flexibility in usage, but the problem is that everyone puts into this pool and only 1 person gets to take out. I believe the intent here was that it would be a tool of versatility, used by adventurers to cater to whatever situation they are currently facing. "Oh crap, heals are falling behind, limit break!" or similar reactiveness. It sounds great on paper, but it also limits that feeling of elation from skillchaining to a single player. Any time you put in something big, flashy, and powerful like this into a game, players are naturally going want to get to use it. And who can blame them?! "Here's this big awesome flashy ability! But only so-and-so should touch it." In one of the dungeons I participated in, We assigned the healer to limit break whenever they felt we needed it. Which, as a DPS, wasn't exciting at all. In other, everyone just started spamming the button when the gauge almost filled, and whoever got it off did their thing. In another, we never used it at all because nobody wanted to step on anyone else's toes. In all three scenarios, the system failed. 


2. Second is less of a problem, as much as something that I just think could be done better. The whole "it fills faster with Fine Play" aspect. Rewarding "fine play" is a good thing. This also has the potential to make the usage of the limit breaks less predictable, unlike a cooldown. You aren't guaranteed that it's going to be available at the same time every encounter. This is somewhat of a double edged sword, I worry that groups may count on this to get through certain phases of an encounter, or to deal with certain mechanics. While there's nothing directly wrong with this, it runs the risk of becoming a requirement instead of a bonus. While I think the core concept here (play better, get bonuses) is spot on, I want to know how it works. As a player, I want to see my enhanced contribution, games have become very proficient at giving negative feedback to players, but this is a perfect opportunity for positive feedback! We often shroud player success and reward in so much mystery, yet rub player failure and punishment in their faces, why not try to let the player know that they did something great, and are getting some reward for it? Heck, you could even combine this with the first point and let the biggest contributing player pull the trigger, though that definitely doesn't solve the first problem at all, it just blames the problem on the players. (don't do that)


3. Third is the usage and implementation of the ability. Let's picture you're a new player, and in your first dungeon. You've got this glowing bar in the upper left of the corner flashing at you, and not the foggiest on what to do with it. This ability requires you to take an ability out of your spell book and place it on your action bar, not too terrible, but the ability is only useful in groups and dungeons. So if you're not group you are just adding to interface clutter (something I hate). This is one of my personal favorite things that wow solved by giving you a contextual button on your screen that pops up. The limit system feels like the perfect place for the same type of resolution. How enticing is that button when it pops up? 

        Now, it's very possible that these may change moving forward. Even the bullet points above talk about higher level versions of limit breaks, it's quite possible that higher level breaks have different rules or functions at this time, I can't say for sure. But as they sit, I was a bit let down. 

        So what do you think? Any of you get a chance to try out the beta? Or maybe the Limit Break system? If not, that's fine, what do you think about it based on just the descriptions above? I'd love to know. 

I'll probably be doing some more FFXIV posts in the near future, as I've really been enjoying the game a ton in beta.

Bioshock Infinite

This could get in trouble wish some of my friends, but let's take some time to talk about Bioshock Infinite.

If you're a gamer, you've undoubtedly at least HEARD of this game. It's one of the year's most highly rated and highly talked about games. And for good reason, there's a lot to talk about here. There really aren't a whole ton of games out there that command as much attention as the "-shock" series has built. The series as a whole has built a large and loving following over the years.

The game opens up extremely strong, the first hour or so is basically an introduction into world of Columbia. This introduction is incredible. The world was breathtaking and so full of life. You're flooded with all of the interesting characteristics of this magical floating 1912 city. You enjoy time during a festival where everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, but things just don't seem right for you. There are quite a few odd things happening around you and way too much to be considered coincidence. I felt like the first couple hours with bioshock really set the game up to be incredible.

                Unfortunately for me, that feeling didn't last. After learning about the world, it's beauties as well as it's horrors, the shit hit's the fan. This is, of course, expected from a first person shooter. I remember where you get your first taste of the graphic violence of the game. Now, as a gamer, I'm no stranger to graphic e-violence. The scene early on where you deal with the racism of the society, and end up dealing with the situation through extreme violence is a powerful moment. The horrible violence in stark contrast to the sheer beauty of the world hits pretty hard. That first moment of the unspeakable violence here is a shock, and I think did exactly what violence in a game should do, it shocked you. You go from saying "This place is beautiful, but it's got some pretty dark and messed up under tones" into a "hoooooly shit" moment. While I feel this part was impactful and effective, the problem is that the entire rest of the game hangs on this high level of extreme violence, it loses its impact and the effect and remains the standard for the rest of the game. Essentially turning the violence away from our initial, shocking, interaction with violence into a desensitized, excessive, and childish game of spraying as much blood everywhere as you can. I think this is where violence usually fails in video games, it's extremely powerful when proving a point, giving character depth, building the story, and a thousand other uses, but when it's just constantly over the top as it is from this moment on, it loses all of its power and becomes childish.

The characters in the game are completely the opposite. They aren't obvious, in your face, and shoving the world down your throat at all. In fact, the Lutece siblings are the polar opposite of this. They speak in what seems like riddles, and continue to make you question what is really going on. From a story/character perspective, I feel like the Luteces are definitely the high point in the game for me. They were interesting, made me ask questions, really kept me moving forward through the game, and did so with a whimsical nature that only intrigued me further. The same can be said for Songbird. His first show on screen I said "oh, that's a boss for sure." But the game develops the character, exposes you to his internal struggle, his motivations, and you begin to pit the creature. In the end he even turns to your side for the final battle, only to die off in one of the better death scenes I can remember from a game. The people who designed, animated, and told the story for these characters should be applauded, as I feel these characters are responsible for the greatest achievements this game made.

Of course, we have to talk about Elizabeth. I have to admit, she really bothered me in this game. The buildup to her rescue felt good, and finally getting her on your team felt good as well. But that's where she kind of lost it for me. The game presented itself as an escort mission of sorts, to get her out. But it turned away from that pretty quickly. While I think Elizabeth was masterfully animated, written for, and performed, her interactions with the gameplay itself became really obnoxious early on. First and foremost, she's basically non-existent to the enemies in the game. She can't take any damage, and they don't even see her despite the fact that she's standing right in front of them. She runs around the battlefield picking up items and money for you, yet it's as if you're the only who can see her. It completely breaks my immersion into the game. Here's this precious girl, who I've done so much to protect, and even though everyone is out to kill me for it, nobody ever thinks to just grab her away. While the world not interacting with her is frustrating, what's worse is that she doesn't seem to have her eyes open the whole game. She'll eventually make some comments about how she doesn't like the killing, but only after you've used your skyhook to rip the faces off hundreds of enemies, none of which seemed to cause even a flinch from her. While I appreciate her desires to help in combat, I don't appreciate how generally useless she is. The rifts had a ton of potential, but they only used then for the occasional skyhook, gun, or Health packs. Not to mention it's completely uncool to have her offering a health pack or salt, then the second I'm out of combat that health pack mysteriously disappeared.

OK, on to the important stuff. Everything up to this point, I'm willing to tolerate from a video game. The story and the characters while at times annoying, oblivious, quirky, or just nonsensical, are all parts of the game and the messed up world that I'm tolerant of. After all the whole game seems to be about trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Where this game really made me feel let down is where we got into the mechanics and gameplay going on here.

Let's start with the skyhook. If you kept up even slightly with the hype and the buildup of this game, you knew about the skyhook. A fancy hook strapped to your arm that lets you ride on rails and fly around the world like an agile monkey in a forest. Except that it doesn't. The skyhook was grossly underutilized in the game. There were times where you got to jump up and grapple overhangs, or slide around for a few staged fights, but for the vast majority of the game I found myself using it as nothing more than a meat grinder. While I'm all for items having multiple uses, I wanted a lot more skyhook. I wanted to spend more time zipping around Columbia and dealing justice from the heavens. The times where you did get to use it felt so intense and powerful that I found myself wanting a lot more. Of course, much like violence, this could have easily turned into a situation where the whole game was just riding on skyhooks, which would have made the whole experience become dull, but I felt like I hardly EVER got to use the damn thing. And when I did, it was often to a fixed point to try and find some stowed away clothing crate somewhere; versus having more combat-based skyhook adventures.

Speaking of clothing, I was pretty bummed out here as well. The first hat I obtained in the game got me really excited. I liked the idea of getting some character customization out of the game. Giving me a system where I can change things up for different battles and circumstances. Unfortunately, with clothing being so rare coupled with randomly generated effects, I ended up finding an outfit and never changing it throughout the whole game. I feel like this system had a lot of potential, but when an equipping system ends up being used only 2 or 3 times early in the game, it makes the whole system seem really minor and destroys any attempt for growth from it. Sometimes I wonder if a small and simple crafting system could have been helpful. In turn, allowing me to really push my character into the direction that works with my playstyle.

On a random side note of Bioshock systems, what the hell is going on with the food here? Some give health, some gives salts, some take health for salts, etc. Yet nearly all of it is basically pointless. If you see an apple, you're going to eat it, along with everything else in the vicinity. The penalties were negligible at best, and the system feels like it's something they started to plan out, and just never bothered to finish. Given that your character has two primary resources, having restoration choices that force you to prioritize one over the other could develop into a system with some value, but that never happened here. This honestly feels forgotten about by the dev team. Not to mention that the presence of food feels somewhat pointless thanks to the presence of the shield which auto regenerates. Scrounging for health and focusing on survival wasn't even really a concern for me.

OK, back on track here. Let's look at the shield in Bioshock. The "halo-shield" has become quite the staple in FPS games in recent times. It self-regenerates when "out of combat" for a few seconds, and gives the player something of a "protective bubble" in the game. This isn't, exactly, a bad thing on its own, we've seen loads of games with this system do well, but where it gets a bit wonky is how this forces the game designers to change the game to accommodate for it. Thanks to the presence of the shield, the developers are forced to make their enemies capable of very high damage to break through it, or they need to try and set you up with ambush situations to surprise you and break through the shield. Not to mention that the breaking of the shield is way too graphically intrusive. Your whole screen goes yellow and you can't see anything for a couple of seconds. The presence of the self-regenerating shield forces the level designers into basically having stupid AI and play cheap tricks. They are forced to overwhelm the player to allow for the shield to be brought down, you're ambushed from all sides and without some system telling me where I'm being hit from I have no idea where it's coming from half the time. In the situation of enemies doing massive damage, it simply makes them feel cheap and unfair. While this isn't always a bad thing in games, the amount of damage taken should mean something. If you get hit by something that does lethal damage, you should have been able to avoid it through skill. I shouldn't walk into a room and get jumped on for my whole shield plus half of my health. This whole system essentially made it so getting hit doesn't matter half the time, and when it does it matters so much that it's grossly unfair. I remember the first automaton cannon I fought (before I had the shield) being really exciting. I had to plan out a way to deal with him with him without getting creamed, I tried changing up my positioning, attacking in bursts, paying attention to audio cues to try and catch him while reloading. It was a great experience, it felt dangerous yet manageable. After having the shield, they turned into a game of "pop out, do some damage, chill until my shield regenerates. Repeat"

This ties in to the enemy design which felt pretty lacking in bioshock infinite. Many of the enemies in the game just felt really stupid or grossly overpowered. In a world that's so intriguing and interesting, having essentially two enemy types was really disappointing. You're either being swarmed by a lot of small guys who do little more than charge at you while shooting, or your stuck with a heavy hitter who wrecks you if you get too close. The enemy behavior essentially turned me into a one-trick pony while playing through. Once you found something that worked you were never really forced outside of that comfort zone to experiment with other vigor/gun combinations. I can think of 2 maybe 3 situations in the whole game that asked more of me than to simply unload as much ammo as possible. Maybe drop a vigor here or there. These situations were the closest thing that bioshock had to boss fights and were welcome additions to the repetition of the gameplay and enemies encountered through most of the game. I really wish there had been more bosses or enemy variability.

Which leads me to the weapon system. Guns, lots of guns. I have to say, and this could fully be my fault and my fault alone, but I felt extremely limited by the ability to only equip two guns at a time. Often times I found myself completely skipping weapons because I didn't want to risk losing a weapon that I'd found to be my go-to. While this provides me with some level of choice in my weapon loadout, it also prevents me from trying out new things and really experimenting with my armory. There are guns in bioshock that I've only fired once or twice just to see how they behave. There were situations where I picked up a new gun from a safe, assumed it was very powerful due to finding it in a safe behind a lock, only to be hugely disappointed the second I got to test it in combat due to how weak it was. I feel like the vast gun variability would have worked out much better if ammo had been the limiting factor in my weapon usage instead of my ability to only hold two guns. Running out of ammo in my favorite forcing me to search for alternate ways to complete the task at hand is a great way to push people to experiment with weapons. But, due to the placement of vending machines, I never ran out of ammo. This part feels like a wasted opportunity to me, there are so many guns in bioshock, and I really wanted to play around with more of them I just never had a reason to. The  upgrades did so little for me, making them feel almost useless. While any gamer knows that stat improvements like "increased damage" are the right choice, they are seldom the most fun or interesting choices. Guns, although, or only half of the equation here, this is bioshock, so we've got to talk about vigors.

I loved the vigors in concept. In stark contrast to the weapons, vigors also had some interesting upgrades. Not all of them, but there were a few good ones in there here and there. While the whole super powers and mana bar thing is nothing new in games, bioshock didn't really force me to play with them as much as I'd have liked. It's very similar to the gun concept I talked about above. There's no real need or reason to deviate from the formula that you've grown comfortable with. You'd get a new one here and there, but they felt really formulaic as you'd acquire them, and you'd essentially be confronted with some challenge in the next few minutes that is ideally suited to your newly acquired power. After said challenge, you switch back to your comfort vigor and simply keep on keepin' on. This could have been mitigated by using per-vigor charges, essentially the same way that guns use ammo above. I feel like the presence of all of these weapons and all of these vigors begs for me to play around with different combinations, it wants me to try new things and be continually exploring my arsenal and powers in tandem with my exploration of Columbia and the story, but the game never actually asked me to do so. The trapping system was an interesting touch, but without enemies that do more than just charge straight at me, trapping didn't feel like it was ever really worth the effort. Had the game had some level of a stealth component to it, I think the trapping could have been a major boon for the vigors, but as it sits I never felt the need to play with or really use traps or vigors during the game. Which is a real shame.

 When all is said and done, I feel like bioshock is a huge game of missed opportunities. After playing through a few times I feel like the game made no real attempts to push me out of my comfort zone. The death system was far too forgiving, allowing me to zerg many situations, the weapons and vigors never pushed me into the area of ability experimentation. The shield allowed me to play recklessly and aggressively, while the enemies were predictable and formulaic. I really wanted to love this game, it's beautiful and the world had infinite potential (pun intended). Luckily, the masterfully crafted characters and story do a lot to keep the game going. 

Wow Hunters

*This is very stream-of-consciousness. It's scatterbrained and mostly just me rambling. If you're reading this, please keep in mind I didn't take the time to pretty this one up, I hope to later. But I just had to get this written down while I was thinking about it.*

In a recent discussion with some friends, I was confronted with the question of what I play in wow, and what I didn't like about my class. I thought to myself “oh, this easy”. I answered that I play a hunter, and that I feel like I have way too many abilities on my bars. There’s just too much stuff there, it’s overwhelming. Then they followed up with “I think that’s fair, what would you cut?” and I stumbled.

It’s weird, ability bloat or issues with class-kits are easy problems to “feel”. I think everyone who has a high end character in wow feels, sometimes, like parts of their class are excessive or too specialized. The irony here, is that while I knew WHAT I felt about it, I hadn't really made the effort to dive in and try and identify what was making feel like my class was bloated.

So, I decided to do so. It’s one of those things that you know by feel, but without some analysis it’s just a gut thing. And when trying to really explain something to someone, saying “that’s just how I feel, I don’t have examples” just looks bad.

Anyways, in the process of going through all of the hunter abilities, what I feel their purposes are, and how useful I think they are, I came to some conclusions and drew some connections with the hunter design that I hadn’t really explored in the past. Having played a hunter for years, I’m a bit annoyed that it took some prompting to make me do this. I guess I never really dove into class design due to focusing my thoughts elsewhere. Either way, here are my thoughts on being a hunter, ability bloat, hunter systems, and what I feel like would make being a hunter more enjoyable for me.

The first thing with hunters, is that I feel we’re still plagued by some remnants of old design. By this I mean that we still have abilities around or systems running that just don’t really apply to modern wow. Look at some of the abilities we have for our pets.

Pet System Abilities:

Feed Pet: This ability made a ton of sense back when we had to worry about pet happiness, and our pets abandoning us. It allowed us to give food to our pet and keep them happy. The happiness system is now long gone. But we kept this ability, it was retooled to be a 50% heal for our pet, only usable out of combat, and it still requires the consumption of an item. This is one of those abilities where I love the fantasy of it, but the current functionality isn't really there. I logged into my hunter and realized that I don’t even have the thing on my bars, talking with my fellow guild members, neither do they. This could, essentially, be pruned. Better yet, it could be rolled into the mend pet ability. Mend pet is a nice hot that heals your pet for 2.5% a second, and is usable in combat. It seems to me it would be super easy to make it heal 5% a tick out of combat.

Beast Lore: This is another ability that is antiquated. There was a time where your pet was super important for a hunter. I mean, it’s still important for a hunter’s effectiveness, but in today’s wow all pets have the same stats. You tame a pet now-a-days not for higher damage but for which buff/debuff it gives, or a specific ability the pet has. While information like damage/health/diet/armor were all super useful in the past, they are pretty much pointless in today’s wow. This ability essentially gives a hunter two important pieces of information: Special Ability and if it’s Tamable. Both of which could simply be added directly to the hunter tooltip when selecting a beast.

Aspects:

OK, there’s two buttons we can get rid of, next I want to talk about the hunters aspects system. Again, this was a neat system at one time. It worked similar to paladin auras or warrior stances. The hunter would take on different aspects that did different things. One of which used to make us more mobile, while another would give us more mana. It forced us into adapting our aspect to the situation. It was pretty slick back then. Today, we have three aspects. Hawk gives us a passive damage boost, while cheetah makes us move faster, but with a penalty if we’re hit. Any hunter spends 95% of their time in Hawk in today’s wow. When talented it even gives you a damage reduction! So let’s talk about cheetah/pack.

I feel like cheetah served a great purpose in the past. In my experience this was a wonderful ability for rapid wipe recovery. Thinking about the old days of Vaelstraz where you had 1hr or he despawned, shaving a few seconds off your wipe recovery was mandatory. If you wanted to get another attempt in, you needed to save every second. In today’s wow, this ability is pretty much just a troll. Raids now return you to the instance much closer to where you wiped, so your runs back are minimized. Many raids allow you to mount while inside, so cheetah is useless there. Currently there really aren't any limited timed bosses anymore, so getting back 2 seconds quicker doesn't make or break your group. As a hunter, I honestly wouldn't miss this ability in the slightest.

So let’s say we cut aspect of the pack out, that leaves us with cheetah and hawk left. Cheetah is exactly the same as pack, only for just the hunter. I feel like this is MUCH more practical, as one of the hunter’s most powerful tools is the ability to kite. So let’s keep cheetah, but this leaves our aspect system with only two abilities. Which is far from exciting. I really like the aspect system personally. It makes me feel like I’m being active and reacting to my surroundings. Either way remember the aspect system, we’ll come back to it later.

Active Abilities:

There are a few buttons in here that I honestly feel like are just in the way. First and foremost is hunter’s mark. There was a time where this was the only method of “mob marking”. Getting through Garr without this ability and 4 or more hunters was not an easy task at the time. But with today’s raid markers, I feel like the “marking” aspect of this ability doesn't really apply anymore. But, lucky for us, this also gives a debuff that gives us a damage bonus. Which is awesome, and useful for sure! But the hunter’s mark is currently automatically applied when we use our core damage abilities. With the fact that it’s auto-applied, and that marking is a thing of the past, just take the button away. We don’t need to have it actively on our bars anymore.

Next ability to go, is eagle eye. This has some neat functionality in pvp and for reconnaissance work, but the fact that it breaks camouflage is just painful. You’re essentially just standing there doing nothing while it’s active. In high end pvp, there’s really not enough time to use this to spy on the other team. Now, this is one of the abilities that I love the fantasy of. The ability to see far off places is so fun in theory. But in actual game play, I think I’ve used this ability only for messing around and handful of times. I don’t think I've ever seen another hunter use it.

Let’s also prune, or at least change scare beast. This is a fantasy spell, it seems really cool in theory. The hunter has power over beasts! He can scare them away in fear! Well, so can other classes. Except they can scare anything. Hunters are already pretty notorious for their control, so I wonder if changing this to a non-beast specific fear would force us to lose some other control elsewhere, but I feel like the only time this really becomes super useful is when fighting other hunters (or the occasional warlock), or if an encounter is specifically designed for this ability. It’s simply too limited to be of major usefulness.

Widow Venom. I hate this spell. Looking at all of the other mortal strike effects, this is by far the weakest one. It has the advantage of being ranged, which does count for something, but let’s look at the other mortal wounds effects. Mortal strike, rising crane kick(ww), wound poison, warlock pet, devilsaur pet. This is the only one that doesn't have a damage component to it, or isn't completely passive. In the case of the warrior and monk, they are also part of the CORE rotation, which essentially makes the debuffs application pretty passive as well. Now, anyone who pvps a lot, or even in pve at times will tell you how powerful this debuff can be. So I wouldn't kill the debuff entirely, instead I think this is where we could go back to the aspect system. To me, this feels like it should be part of serpent sting. Give me a third aspect that makes my serpent sting do less damage, but also apply this debuff to the target. It mimics the rogue usage fairly closely at this point, but by forcing us to have a slight dps loss in the process, I feel like it’s more in-line with the rest of the mortal wounds debuffs. It also gives hunters a bit more of a reason to, at times, drop out of aspect of the hawk.

Traps! 

Traps are core to the hunter. We have invisible deployables that, if used with some thought, can be extremely powerful; doubly so with the addition of the trap launcher. The trap system gives hunters some unique gameplay that I don’t think many other classes are fully aware of. But not all traps are created equal. Personally, I feel like snake trap could be done away with, or at least changed to be more exciting. Again, this is a fantasy spell, the idea and the visual for snake trap is great. But the fact that they are easily wiped out in 1 or 2 aoes (even when glyphed) gives them limited pvp potential. They are controlled by ai which can, at times exhibit odd behavior. They don’t do any meaningful damage, and I can only think of one real use for them in modern raiding. I almost feel like these could be combined with the ice trap, make them no-longer targetable, stationary, and have them spit their venoms at anything that comes in range for 30 seconds. This would essentially do the same thing as ice trap, give a great visual, bring the hunter down to 3 traps (only one of each school, right now there’s 2 ice, 1 fire, 1 nature) and it would still serve the purpose of both traps. Of course, I think we’d need to have  a shadow or arcane trap to fill the gap, which doesn't really eliminate this ability, but tweaks it a bit instead.

Spec Specific:

I generally feel most of these are pretty spot on. Except for cobra shot, that is. Cobra shot is a total replacement for steady shot. I’m not sure why to be honest, it seems to me like it would be just as effective to simply make steady shot refresh serpent sting for survival/beast mastery. It’s nice that when specced into survival/BM that steady shot is completely removed from our spellbooks, preventing someone from using the wrong focus generator while in those specs, but I don’t really feel like having two separate abilities holds a whole lot of value. It could be rolled into the mastery, or simple have steady shot taken out and just make everyone use cobra shot.

Black Arrow is another ability I’d like to see purged. As a survival hunter myself, it fits nicely into my rotation, and prevents me from being focus positive, but it shares a cooldown with explosive trap. Now, I’m ok with it sharing the cooldown, what I don’t like is that it takes away value from the trap system for me. I think that having the trap proc explosive shot, and removing black arrow makes my gameplay more interesting. Albeit it’s a bit more complex as the trap requires placement, but I honestly have more fun using the traps than I do applying a dot on cooldown. Of course, this solves movement issues, and losing explosive traps positioning. But the lock and load proc could easily be moved elsewhere, turning explosive trap into a dps spell.