Casualization is the biggest problem wow: True or false

[McLovenIt]

I started to believe it is true. Little QoL changes, casualizations/trivializations actually raped the RPG feel AND accomplishment feel in this game. Everything is faster now; leveling, raiding, maxing professions, getting new mounts etc. etc.. Back in the days, everything took time and felt like an accomplishment. Leveling was half of the journey...Nowadays, it is somehow considered to be an annoyance that needs to end ASAP...Good ol' days.

Yea I definitely agree with this -- I remember when you couldn't even get a mount til like level 20, and it even took time to get the gold for your riding skill and than to buy a basic mount.....than I played after a long break, and every noob in their starting region has a damn raptor and kodo. Seems like the higher the level cap was, the easier it was to level as well.. Old school WoW seemed to give the dedicated veterans the upper hand vs the casual players, which of course got frustrating even for guys like me who spent lots of hours in the world, but was not at the same level as others I would face in PVP....but hey, losing is how you got better.

I just couldn't play anymore once they started changing up the talent trees and stuff like that.......it almost felt like it was becoming "WoW For Dummies" where everyone can be a great champion.

[Deleted]

Casualisation destroyed the RPG feeling and sense of accomplishment,things which made WoW what it is(was).
So yes.
(casuals will disagree )

[Rafoel]

Yea I definitely agree with this -- I remember when you couldn't even get a mount til like level 20, and it even took time to get the gold for your riding skill and than to buy a basic mount.....than I played after a long break, and every noob in their starting region has a damn raptor and kodo. Seems like the higher the level cap was, the easier it was to level as well.. Old school WoW seemed to give the dedicated veterans the upper hand vs the casual players, which of course got frustrating even for guys like me who spent lots of hours in the world, but was not at the same level as others I would face in PVP....but hey, losing is how you got better.

I just couldn't play anymore once they started changing up the talent trees and stuff like that.......it almost felt like it was becoming "WoW For Dummies" where everyone can be a great champion.

Last hope in legacy servers.

[brunnor]

Never said raiding is why vanilla WoW was popular. There was a wide range of reasons for that. The world being new and fresh, raiding and PvPing both being a popular scene, etc.

Wildstar raiding was a lot like vanilla WoW raiding, that's what I meant. Why was it similar? Attunements were the one thing that made raiding hard to get into for casual players. Raiding in vanilla was hard because we didn't really have things like guides (wowhead/icy veins etc) to tell us what to do and how to avoid mechanics etc. That was one major reason as to why raiding in vanilla was hard, we just had to learn the fight by participating in it. That's the one difference between wildstar and WoW raiding, that's it. Everything else is pretty similar leading up to the raiding. Not saying Wildstar completely copied WoW, but they stated themselves that they wanted to retain that hardcore feeling that people loved in the past.

The reason wildstar failed had nothing to do with it's hardcore mentality. It had everything to do with the leveling being god awful to get there. Every single one of my 20ish friends playing quit before level 20 minus 2 of them because it was just so damned boring. Yes, 20 people, not a huge sample size, but they were all former hardcore raiders looking for a fun game and they just couldn't get past the same old boring ass leveling process.

At max level? The game was great. Good dungeons with solid challenges, raids were good for a starting game. It needed some polish for sure and some tweeks, but stuff like that is learned over time. If people could have roughed it through the leveling process, the game would have done fine.

[Racthoh]

what you have a product that's designed for everyone to enjoy you get this sort of soup that nobody really hates but they're not like craving for more either.

[Daffan]

Explain. Wildstar (albeit a different game than WoW) went the hardcore route that WoW once followed in Vanilla (attunements and such) and it failed so miserably. I'm not saying I absolutely love LFR, I'm a normal/heroic raider with mythic mixed in here and there, I personally believe that there's content for both sides. LFR for casuals, mythic for hardcore players, normal/heroic for hardcore casuals. It's not that hard to understand. Some people will choose to do LFR and say "oh I beat the game" but that's their choice. I personally prefer to go into normal/heroic to say that and then mythic for a challenge.

Basically what I'm saying is, we have the option to choose challenging content or not. If Blizzard said to their playerbase "challenging content or leave the game" we would have less than the amount of players we have now. We have a decent balance between casual content and hardcore content.

Disclaimer: I dislike LFR, I'd rather have normal/heroic be casual content because it still proposes a challenge to casual players, while having mythic as a challenge to hardcore players. I think that's a good balance, but who knows, I'm not a developer. Also, this is towards raiding. If I were to speak about everything else in the game, I'd say leveling has to be harder/longer to feel like we're actually spending time out in the world, getting gear before raiding should be a bit longer, etc.

Wildstar failed for a million other reasons. In the hardcore aspect, it was fine - except for the raid sizes. History of game logistics demands 10 man minimum or flexible sizes.

Secondly, the problem with multiple raid difficulties (2-3 is ok if you work the Ilvl like magic) is that eventually, the 3rd raids LFR will drop better gear then the first raid on Mythic (eg HFC LFR > HM Mythic). Now, I'm not saying Mythic should be required by anyone, but at least progressing through the raids on normal bare min, or heroic instead of skipping over with LFR/other catchup.

Casualisation destroyed the RPG feeling and sense of accomplishment,things which made WoW what it is(was).
So yes.
(casuals will disagree )

Sense of accomplishment is a big one. And I don't know why a lot of people don't understand the concept more.

When you got any piece of gear in older WoW's, from dungeons - maybe a pug or something it was pretty awesome. Now you are given so much crap everything feels meh/worthless. Even acquiring Mythic gear is underwhelming to aim for because next tier pvp blues are better and 10x easier.

[Taeldorian]

@Daffan Agreed. I'm not too knowledgeable about Wildstar, I just took what I've read/heard, sorry about the wrong info. I'm somewhat okay with having multiple difficulties but I'd much rather have N/H/M rather than LFR/N/H/M, 4 is too many. 3 is alright. Normal is easy enough for everyone to be able to do it, groups assemble faster than they do with LFR (1h ques for DPS, 20-30m ques for heals) and it has some mechanics at least.

As for the sense of accomplishment that you touched on, I totally agree with both you and the person you quoted. I remember having to actually work for my gold and when I got enough for a mount (keep in mind it was just a normal horse, nothing special) I felt so damn good. Same thing when I completed the quest for my paladin mount, it felt good. Last time I felt seriously accomplished was when I worked through MoP challenge modes because the paladin set from there was one of my favorites in game and still is so it felt great to get it without boosting or anything like that. I've completed all the mythic raids this expac and honestly I felt great when my guild and I cleared them but that isn't enough honestly, I'd love to see more things like having to acquire a decent sum of hard earned gold in order to get a thing you want (like a mount back in the day).

[Deleted]

False.

Expansions with retarded themes (pandas specifically) and half-assed story content are the biggest problem. Plus people getting bored of the "only one endgame raid at any given time with zero variety apart from difficulty" concept.

[ATZenith]

No, it's just because the the game just isn't going to feel like it used to. Content that would have been fun/blown just can't exist anymore. It's has been 4+ years for me, and 10+ for some. The game just gets stale.

[kamuimac]

Casualisation destroyed the RPG feeling and sense of accomplishment,things which made WoW what it is(was).
So yes.
(casuals will disagree )

casualisation is sooo bad bla bla bla - if its so bad then why every game in last couple of years which tried to not be aimed at casuals failed big time - wildtar is just step away from death - black desert which was supposed to be yet another wow killer is atm failing spectacularly just months after its launch - why ? because hardcore crowd is too small to keep game succesful - people want causal game that the truth

[Deleted]

False.

Expansions with retarded themes (pandas specifically) and half-assed story content are the biggest problem. Plus people getting bored of the "only one endgame raid at any given time with zero variety apart from difficulty" concept.

Raiding become only end game becouse of accessability. Beocuse todays raids are so easy to get into. Yes i actualy pug heroic raids on my realm and isnt even hard. So raiding become only relevant content to do. There is no barrierk, no challenge or difficulty. So naturaly player will ignore rest of the game and just do raiding as most efficient way and path of least resistance.

- - - Updated - - -

casualisation is sooo bad bla bla bla - if its so bad then why every game in last couple of years which tried to not be aimed at casuals failed big time - wildtar is just step away from death - black desert which was supposed to be yet another wow killer is atm failing spectacularly just months after its launch - why ? because hardcore crowd is too small to keep game succesful - people want causal game that the truth

Yep do you know why it happend to Black Desert? Becouse they put into the game bosses what made everyting els in game worthless to do. Items what you grineded for weeks and months suddenly start droping for players on daily basis. Does it remind it to you someting? Oh yeah mabye like raiding in WoW? They made game more accessible and more casual friendly and it made lot of players leave this game. MAybe try do some reaserched befor you post something.

[cqwrteur]

casualization is a problem. However, it's not the biggest problem. Too much raid focus is.

[Osmeric]

While I think the #hardcore of WildStar contributed to its failure, there was enough wrong with the game that it wasn't a clean test of the "hardcore = failure" hypothesis. On the other hand, if you're demanding a clean test, you're probably asking for too much.

Lots of people didn't make it to level cap in WildStar, but of those that did most failed to make any progress in raiding. Even the hardcores mostly gave up. The game continued to decline even after the people who would have bailed during leveling had left, so the end game was also a failure.

I'm not sure Black Dessert is a good test either. Isn't that pretty much purely a grind game, with no real end game except PvP?

[tangers58]

Is casualization single handedly the biggest reason for people leaving world of warcraft in unprecedented numbers?

True or false.

Absolutely true. Its gotten boring, realms firsts are mostly gone... world firsts... unique titles. Anything that the dumbest person to sub can't get has to be removed! Or the poor little dear's feelings might be hurt.

[Auxora]

True, but you're about 5-6 years late. The casualization game design change for wow started in late wotlk in ~2010-2011, it's not really been a recent round of changes. It started back then and just shifted piece by piece to casual since then.

[Daffan]

@Daffan Agreed. I'm not too knowledgeable about Wildstar, I just took what I've read/heard, sorry about the wrong info. I'm somewhat okay with having multiple difficulties but I'd much rather have N/H/M rather than LFR/N/H/M, 4 is too many. 3 is alright. Normal is easy enough for everyone to be able to do it, groups assemble faster than they do with LFR (1h ques for DPS, 20-30m ques for heals) and it has some mechanics at least.

As for the sense of accomplishment that you touched on, I totally agree with both you and the person you quoted. I remember having to actually work for my gold and when I got enough for a mount (keep in mind it was just a normal horse, nothing special) I felt so damn good. Same thing when I completed the quest for my paladin mount, it felt good. Last time I felt seriously accomplished was when I worked through MoP challenge modes because the paladin set from there was one of my favorites in game and still is so it felt great to get it without boosting or anything like that. I've completed all the mythic raids this expac and honestly I felt great when my guild and I cleared them but that isn't enough honestly, I'd love to see more things like having to acquire a decent sum of hard earned gold in order to get a thing you want (like a mount back in the day).

Yeah, the whole concept of hard challenge = best feeling & reward is deeply rooted in human psychology basically. It's why when you use cheat codes in singleplayer campaigns and stuff it doesn't feel as good.

Yep do you know why it happend to Black Desert? Becouse they put into the game bosses what made everyting els in game worthless to do. Items what you grineded for weeks and months suddenly start droping for players on daily basis. Does it remind it to you someting? Oh yeah mabye like raiding in WoW? They made game more accessible and more casual friendly and it made lot of players leave this game. MAybe try do some reaserched befor you post something.

Yup. The field bosses right? That dropped heaps of stuff and made everything else redundant almost they were so good.

If an MMO offers something that is way more viable then everything else. The rest of the game die.

[Deleted]

Many aspects of what made the game feel like an RPG and an actual world have been lost. Couple this with shitty new storylines and bland design and everything feels so watered down.

[Osmeric]

Yeah, the whole concept of hard challenge = best feeling & reward is deeply rooted in human psychology basically. It's why when you use cheat codes in singleplayer campaigns and stuff it doesn't feel as good.

You know what feels worse than using a cheat code? Not succeeding at all.

If an MMO only has a difficult end game then most people will not succeed. For those people, the psychological reward is less than if the game were easier.

[Rafoel]

No, it's just because the the game just isn't going to feel like it used to. Content that would have been fun/blown just can't exist anymore. It's has been 4+ years for me, and 10+ for some. The game just gets stale.

Nope. Repeating this again - I and my brother recently started playing on Vanilla private server and we're having more fun than we've in WoW for the last 6 years. Funny thing? I started in BC and my brother started in WotLK.

[Daffan]

You know what feels worse than using a cheat code? Not succeeding at all.

If an MMO only has a difficult end game then most people will not succeed. For those people, the psychological reward is less than if the game were easier.

Not in WoW's case.

Getting any item pre-raid or even from the earlier raids was more satisfying then anything now. Crafting a spellfire set > any garbage raid item now (Just an example how prof was not obsolete)

I don't think ANYONE get's a psychological reward from LFR, mayyyybe a tiny portion of the people who do it.