Ghostcrawler: "don't try to be all things to all players"

[Mekh]

GC's quote, while reasonable, is directly at odds with the official assessment, that any given group in the game - raiders, pet battlers, collectors, etc. - is a minority. So which one should they disenfranchise? And if they drop one of these groups, it might have seen unforeseen consequences for the game's eco system.

[Vichan]

Does a thread really need to be made every time this guy tweets something?

[Justpassing]

It's like Blizzard is trying to maximize their profits, how dare they!

[Luckx]

Original Blue post here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5664?page=4#75

"Almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase. That may sound odd at first blush, but it's true. In a sense, that's part of the magic of WoW. It is not a narrow game, but rather one that can be enjoyed in numerous different ways, by people with hugely diverse playstyles. A minority of players raid. A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP. A minority of players have several max-level alts. A minority of players do pet battles, roleplay, list things for sale on the auction house, do Challenge Mode dungeons, and the list goes on. Virtually the only activity that a clear majority of players participate in is questing and level-up dungeons, but even then there's a sizeable group that views those activities as a nuisance that they have to get through in order to reach their preferred endgame.

And yet, taken together, that collection of minority groups literally IS the World of Warcraft."

— Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas

Ion Hazzikostas is lead encounter designer on the World of Warcraft team, Ion Hazzikostas’s primary responsibility is overseeing the creation of the game’s dungeon and raid content.
Hazzikostas joined Blizzard Entertainment in the summer of 2008 as a game designer, and his responsibilities have included raid boss design and implementation, class design and balancing, and maintaining the World of Warcraft achievement system.

[Mekh]

Original Blue post here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5664?page=4#75

"Almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase. That may sound odd at first blush, but it's true. In a sense, that's part of the magic of WoW. It is not a narrow game, but rather one that can be enjoyed in numerous different ways, by people with hugely diverse playstyles. A minority of players raid. A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP. A minority of players have several max-level alts. A minority of players do pet battles, roleplay, list things for sale on the auction house, do Challenge Mode dungeons, and the list goes on. Virtually the only activity that a clear majority of players participate in is questing and level-up dungeons, but even then there's a sizeable group that views those activities as a nuisance that they have to get through in order to reach their preferred endgame.

And yet, taken together, that collection of minority groups literally IS the World of Warcraft."

— Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas

Ion Hazzikostas is lead encounter designer on the World of Warcraft team, Ion Hazzikostas’s primary responsibility is overseeing the creation of the game’s dungeon and raid content.
Hazzikostas joined Blizzard Entertainment in the summer of 2008 as a game designer, and his responsibilities have included raid boss design and implementation, class design and balancing, and maintaining the World of Warcraft achievement system.

Thank you for pulling up the quote. Yes, this exactly.

[Sanct]

If you consider that an x-pac lasts 2 years (over 100 weeks) and he only played 14 weeks, that isn't a lot of time invested.

Don't get me wrong, he didn't decide to stop playing the game. His desire to play in a more organized format just died. He's still playing almost daily, but sticks with LFR and the occasional Mythic dungeon.

Man, i was full casual whole WoD and i never ever touched LFR. Saying that there were close to zero pugs of t14/t15 meant that you didn't even open Group Finder. Spoiler: There were loads of pugs. If someone really wanted to get a better raid experience not some faceroll in LFR it was more than possible. And you can leave these raids whenever you want except it's Mythic, so don't come with the "i don't have time for real raiding" excuse.

We're talking about MoP. The group finder, in its current incarnation, did not exist. The pugs that did exist on our server for t14/15 when SoO was current were meta achievement pugs, and weren't looking for under-geared tag-alongs.

[Aggrophobic]

WoW got to where it is (or was) because it was "all things to all players".
It's always been a game where players of all kinds could find something to do.

People think this Ghostcrawler is some sort of god today but when he worked for Blizzard people hated him. I mean the rage in Cata whenever he said anything was silly.
Why do people actually listen to him now?

[Alydael]

Don't get me wrong, he didn't decide to stop playing the game. His desire to play in a more organized format just died. He's still playing almost daily, but sticks with LFR and the occasional Mythic dungeon.

Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing him in anyway. I just feel that 14-20 weeks "catch up" time is fair in an x-pac that lasts over 100 weeks.

[Deleted]

As a player only interested in Mythic raiding, I don't care if Blizzard nerf everything into the ground for casual plebs , I don't care if they add more LFR difficulties or even easier dungeons, none of it matters to me, I don't even care if they add more useless junk like selfie cameras or battle pets.

AS LONG AS they keep making mythic difficulty raids, if these ever get cut for any reason I'm outta here.

Let people play they way they want to play, simple as that.

This is an example of non-selfish player. Player how dont want for others fun to be ruined.
Kudos to you.

[ItachiZaku]

I really like Ashran and to a lesser extent, pet battles. Those are the two main things I do. I don't have all max level blue battle pets, I don't have Khan. I just like playing and having fun. Sometimes it means doing a dungeon, sometimes it means doing an LFR. Mostly I just like 3 shotting ANY alliance player I come across in Ashran. If not for Ashran, i probably wouldn't be token subbed.

[Sencha]

100% agree with OP. Blizzard tries to please every kind of player. In the end everybody is disappointed. They should focus on one type of players.

[Kokolums]

Look at vehicle combat.

Blizzard developed some excellent vehicle combat code. But currently it goes unused. Why? What happened? Blizzard's goal was to make it accessible to everyone. But that meant vehicles had to be weak and easy to destroy in order for it to be common. Its not fun to use things that are weak and easy to destroy. So people hated vehicle combat.

A focus on accessibility over fun is a problem.

[Deleted]

I think you're misreading and misrepresenting what he said because you're trying to prove a point of your own.



Yeah. That wasn't what he meant. You're just twisting it to substantiate the special snowflake crap. Raiders have nothing to complain about. If too many raid difficulties made the experience less enjoyable for anyone, then it was mostly for non-raiders, because the game is trying to shoehorn them into something they're not really interested in, instead of giving them content they really enjoy.



What does that have anything to do with the whole "pleasing everyone" theme? Mythic+ is a typical example of a niche thing that most definitely won't attract everyone.



Again, what does that have anything to do with it ... your point doesn't hold any value of all, it's just cheap polemics. You're just trying to put your own spin on something someone who matters™ said. Removing the sense of adventure - you don't say? So that's fact now? You sure everyone feels that way? Convenience for the masses - blah! Can we do without the corny canned phrases? Oh, the masses. Well no, we're making games for the odd one out, we don't want too many people to like this shit. Right?

Exploration? I don't know what game you seem to have been playing in the last few years. MoP and WoD both clearly displayed an effort to encourage straying off the "railroad", walking around and discovering stuff. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the zones of those two expansions contain more stuff to find and explore than anything in Vanilla/TBC. Get real please!



Again blah and polemics, with no substantial argument whatsoever. You can stand there and talk about "streamlining" and "accessibility" and "masses" all day. It's just cheap talk because you don't have anything to substantiate it with. Professions have certainly suffered, but without having to wear an Underdog Edition® tinfoil hat - it was more likely because of a lack of concept and direction and not because someone's trying to "streamline" something for some kind of "masses", that you, apparently, aren't a part of. In any case, Legion shows a genuine attempt to remedy that.



Again just putting this whole spin on everything you can think of. Ability pruning is there to improve gameplay, there's no conspiracy. And if "accessible" means that something's being made better, more likeable to more people - what's so terribly wrong about it?

To be frank, this whole "accessibility, catering to the masses" thing is lame as hell. It's childish and can't be taken seriously. You sound like a kid who doesn't want the other kids in the street to play with the same toys.

U seem to have hard time taking critic like this againts retail. I find it pretty childish also to quote every opinion and put a NAA A nonono in the end

[Deleted]

MMO: To be massive, target the massive central themes/interests

I think Blizzard has done a great job, and made mistakes too.

Which they did with vannila and TBC yeah. Those 12 millions of players played game for what it was back in TBC and vannila no for it is now. Streamlined experience what tryes to cutter everyone. It would be problem if cuttered content is actualy exclusive and unique but it isnt. it is all segmented into difficulty levels.

- - - Updated - - -

WoW got to where it is (or was) because it was "all things to all players".
It's always been a game where players of all kinds could find something to do.

Yes but it wasnt done way where that content for lot of players was separeted into difficulty levels. If you were casuals back in TBC you had Kara, ZA, Grull, Maghteridons lair pugs and tons of relevant dungeons. Now all you have is latest patch with latest raid and difficulty levels. Current ,,game for everyone,, is far from TBC and Vannila desing.

[Pull My Finger]

U seem to have hard time taking critic like this againts retail. I find it pretty childish also to quote every opinion and put a NAA A nonono in the end

I'm sorry? It's hardly possible to filter out some coherent meaning out of that trainwreck mess you typed up instead of a sentence.

[deniter]

Look at vehicle combat.

Blizzard developed some excellent vehicle combat code. But currently it goes unused. Why? What happened? Blizzard's goal was to make it accessible to everyone. But that meant vehicles had to be weak and easy to destroy in order for it to be common. Its not fun to use things that are weak and easy to destroy. So people hated vehicle combat.

A focus on accessibility over fun is a problem.

The problem with vehicle combat was that a player loses control of his/her character which is replaced with a new character with fixed stats (aka vehicle).

The feature would be much more fun and immersive if a player could enhance and modify f.ex a shredder machine vehicle by using professions or doing quest lines, improve its armor and weapons with spare parts, etc.

The very reason most people hated Oculus dungeon in wotlk was the vehicle combat before the last boss. The fight was the same every time you did the dungeon, no matter what epics you had gotten on your character.

[Baconeggcheese]

I think the problem with the difficulty conversation is people always take it to extremes (as they do with everything these days). If someone says the game should be more difficult it is automatically assumed that that means everything needs to be mythic level difficulty across the board. When in reality people are just asking for things to be more than completely trivial.

As watcher mentioned in that more recent interview when talking about the leveling experience, the pacing of the game is fucked and 1shotting mobs isn't engaging or compelling content. There is an in between 1 shotting mobs and how difficult people pretend dark souls is.

[OreoLover]

Which they did with vannila and TBC yeah. Those 12 millions of players played game for what it was back in TBC and vannila no for it is now. Streamlined experience what tryes to cutter everyone. It would be problem if cuttered content is actualy exclusive and unique but it isnt. it is all segmented into difficulty levels.

Difficulty levels don't cater to everyone, they open up similar experiences.

A dungeon is still a dungeon. A raid is still a raid.

If you do not want a challenge, you have an less difficult (easy) mode. If you want a challenge, you have a more difficult (hard) mode. Forcing people who want the "hard mode" to play through all of the "easy modes" is not a better game. Forcing people to play 1 difficulty with growing rewards is not a better game.

"If you were casuals back in TBC you had Kara, ZA, Grull, Maghteridons lair pugs and tons of relevant dungeons." They should improve relevancy, yes, but they shouldn't take away the ability to experience. Difficulties open up similar experiences. Improving relevancy looks like: update old dungeon rewards so people want to do them, update the experience, (other ideas). It does not look like: take away difficulty settings, only the best may experience the newest content, (other ideas).

[Aggrophobic]

Which they did with vannila and TBC yeah. Those 12 millions of players played game for what it was back in TBC and vannila no for it is now. Streamlined experience what tryes to cutter everyone. It would be problem if cuttered content is actualy exclusive and unique but it isnt. it is all segmented into difficulty levels.

- - - Updated - - -



Yes but it wasnt done way where that content for lot of players was separeted into difficulty levels. If you were casuals back in TBC you had Kara, ZA, Grull, Maghteridons lair pugs and tons of relevant dungeons. Now all you have is latest patch with latest raid and difficulty levels. Current ,,game for everyone,, is far from TBC and Vannila desing.

The difficult content of TBC heroics is not that popular though. The rage about how hard HC was in Cata is proof of that and the simplistic gameplay of vanilla would not work either, I mean people are already crying about the number of skills you have in Legion and it's still way more than you had in vanilla. Vanilla also didn't really have any content at all, everything just took a long time to do.

Wrath was the peak of WoW popularity and it's where the game started to be something all players could enjoy after all.

I'm sure you could make WoW into something a certain group of people would love more than anything but to really be successful you need both casuals, the middle ground and hardcore players or you'll end up like Wildstar.

[OreoLover]

Original Blue post here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5664?page=4#75

"Almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase. That may sound odd at first blush, but it's true. In a sense, that's part of the magic of WoW. It is not a narrow game, but rather one that can be enjoyed in numerous different ways, by people with hugely diverse playstyles. A minority of players raid. A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP. A minority of players have several max-level alts. A minority of players do pet battles, roleplay, list things for sale on the auction house, do Challenge Mode dungeons, and the list goes on. Virtually the only activity that a clear majority of players participate in is questing and level-up dungeons, but even then there's a sizeable group that views those activities as a nuisance that they have to get through in order to reach their preferred endgame.

And yet, taken together, that collection of minority groups literally IS the World of Warcraft."

— Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas

Ion Hazzikostas is lead encounter designer on the World of Warcraft team, Ion Hazzikostas’s primary responsibility is overseeing the creation of the game’s dungeon and raid content.
Hazzikostas joined Blizzard Entertainment in the summer of 2008 as a game designer, and his responsibilities have included raid boss design and implementation, class design and balancing, and maintaining the World of Warcraft achievement system.

In addition (from my post in another thread):

Ion Hassikostas (Watcher dev):

"The level up experience through classic zones, it’s pretty broken right now frankly. It’s not really very well tuned.It’s way too easy. It’s not even about difficulty; it’s about pacing. It’s something that frankly we’ve neglected a little bit over the years. There’s been a lot of trickle down effects from balance changes made. Things that used to be talents we now bake in as passives. Buff abilities. We moved things that used to be high level abilities down to make them available at level 10. The end result is that if you run around your basically invincible — even without heirlooms. Heirlooms are a whole other level of degeneracy. But if you’re doing a level 3 quest right now on a new character, make a hunter, make a night elf hunter and go run around Teldrasill — you’re basically one and two-shotting things. You are killing things before they can even engage with you. And the amount of time you are spending fighting versus the amount of time you are spending running around to your next objective is completely out of whack. There’s a lot of other areas like that where the pacing of the game isn’t what it should be and we need to spend more time fixing that up. I think, actually it’s something we’ve been looking to at even starting to do via hot-fixes right now but want to keep doing going forward."

Wowhead summary note: Potentially able to add flexible zone tech to old zones. They'd have a wider level range so you could stay in the zone without skipping the story.

(https://www.twitch.tv/warcraft/v/65650441 - Source video, not gonna dig up the time @_@)