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

[Xar226]

And so on. Do you think that Blizzard has ended up pleasing nobody in their quest of trying to please everyone? Or have they managed to successfully cater to everybody?

They're clearly not going to please everyone. I think they are on track with Legion to please as big a group as they can manage at once.

[Manabomb]

Of course, Greg says that now AFTER his tenure at Blizzard being the lead developer for some of the most homogenizing expansions.

Greg doesn't get to criticize how Blizzard functions right now, because he started the game on this path. If he honestly believed the bullshit he's spewing for extra twitter followers and MMOC recognition, WoW would be a completely different game right now.

Though I will say, a game can be alot of things for alot of people. It doesn't have to be all things for all people, but that doesn't mean it can't try and it can't succeed.

Though, in saying that, I don't think WoW is a model for success in terms of appealing to people.

[Reyvah]

Though, in saying that, I don't think WoW is a model for success in terms of appealing to people.

You'll have to expand on that.
WoW has been able to attract a hugely diverse demographic of players, from young to old (my 73 year old uncle played for a couple years). They have people playing for the PvP competitive arena aspect, the PvE dragon slayers, role-players, solo questers, and heck even the trade chat troll.

It's been commercially successful for over a decade, in an industry moving away from paid subscriptions.

So there's a couple million people who find the game unappealing, yet still fork over a monthly subscription? I don't think this can be explained away by "addiction".

[MoanaLisa]

Watcher recently wrote about how most activities in the game are minority activities. I don't think they are trying to be all things to all people necessarily but the more the table tilts to only the skilled players, the worse they will do. From the start WoW has been a home for more casual players. Despite the imaginings of those who wish the game to be an elitist paradise, it isn't, never has been and never will be. The notion that a game is better for being less accessible is just wrong in this game. OP has it wrong. If the developers have done anything wrong it's been to attempt to please the more hardcore element of their player base at the expense of the core group of players who has played from the start and for who the game was originally designed: The mass market of casual players.

[Varaben]

Part of that is my point, that the current open content (difficulty settings) allow more to experience it.

I was already burning out by Sunwell Plateau, so I didn't get to experience most of it. In Vanilla, I didn't make it through much of Naxx. From Cata on, I've been able to at least see versions of all the raids, while they're at all current or relevant. MoP even brought in "casual LFR farming," with pets and such. So even on the lower difficulty, one could stick around and farm, for transmog/pets/etc. ...with WoD, that is mostly gone from LFR.

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They still make great content. Picking one lane would be near-suicide for the game IMO (Wildstar is what people bring up--even though it splits somewhat), so I'm thankful they haven't. ...and LFR requires such teeny-tiny, related resources... though I get what you mean by diluting focus.

Of course good vs. great isn't a point we can really argue. I think you'll find that games can be very successful focusing on a core audience and slowly building that by making the game better, balancing, adding more content to that one part, etc. I'd be curious to know what sort of game wow could be if they took out a lot of the casual stuff (pet battles, twitter/selfie camera/LFR, etc.) and just got back to basics. Focus on dungeons, raids, questing, professions and leave it at that. How much more of each content could we get? How much faster could the game progress? Maybe the answer is "not much" and it's not worth pursuing.

I think the bigger thing is that a lot of this is psychology. Sure, LFR might not take that much resources, but it does take SOME, and when you give players an easy mode way to get gear, how does that help/hurt the game? I think most of WoW's problems are this sort of "soft" problem. Sure I can not play LFR if I don't want to, but it's just not that simple. People say "well if you want the game to be challenging, just do XYZ to hamstring yourself. problem solved!" And that's laughable and shows a very limited understanding of human behavior.

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Watcher recently wrote about how most activities in the game are minority activities. I don't think they are trying to be all things to all people necessarily but the more the table tilts to only the skilled players, the worse they will do. From the start WoW has been a home for more casual players. Despite the imaginings of those who wish the game to be an elitist paradise, it isn't, never has been and never will be. The notion that a game is better for being less accessible is just wrong in this game. OP has it wrong. If the developers have done anything wrong it's been to attempt to please the more hardcore element of their player base at the expense of the core group of players who has played from the start and for who the game was originally designed: The mass market of casual players.

One thing to remember is that "casual" MMO players meant something very different in the Fall of 2004, than it does in the spring of 2016. We're throwing this word "casual" around and you have to compare it to Everquest, which I've been told (never played it myself) was very hardcore compared to WoW at the time.

[nekobaka]

To be frank, I have no idea why Blizzard is so opposed to it.

They insist that raid bosses and trash have unique models. Raid dungeons have unique art ...

If they recycle "common" assets, they wouldn't have to force people into raids.

Not sure if there was some sarcasm in regards to unique art. Lots of mob models are reskins and added doodads. Blizzard for many years has used various art objects in their raids that are found in the world. Even part of world zones have made up parts of raids. Dungeons have also shared zone art with raids and world zones. The devs go on saying in WotLK that players want unique dungeons and thats why they wont rehash zones only to do just that with ZA/ZG in the next expansion. It is not like the devs are bound by some contract saying they cant. Devs just use it as an excuse rather than saying they dont want to.

[Triks]

The biggest irony is that WoW started to bend over backwards for everyone and their dog during his term as lead designer.

[clevin]

Of course, Greg says that now AFTER his tenure at Blizzard being the lead developer for some of the most homogenizing expansions.

Greg doesn't get to criticize how Blizzard functions right now, because he started the game on this path. If he honestly believed the bullshit he's spewing for extra twitter followers and MMOC recognition, WoW would be a completely different game right now.

Though I will say, a game can be alot of things for alot of people. It doesn't have to be all things for all people, but that doesn't mean it can't try and it can't succeed.

Though, in saying that, I don't think WoW is a model for success in terms of appealing to people.

BING BING BING.

LK was the expansion that introduced bring the player not the class and started us down the road to homogenization. It was the expansion that introduced LFG which paved the way for LFR. Street has close to zero credibility on this unless he either a) reveals that he fought these things and lost and/or b) has learned that they're bad ideas and were a mistake to champion.

[lavaalamp]

Ghost crawler and co are slowly killing league of legends for me. His opinion means fuck all to me and I wish he would retire.

Veterans wanted the ability pruning more than any other demographic because mist game play was button mashing. That expansion's where most spec hit 5 buttons was all bout dat button mashin. Yup... no depth/s

WoW has been all about button smashing ever since BC once classes had rotations...

[clevin]

Watcher recently wrote about how most activities in the game are minority activities. I don't think they are trying to be all things to all people necessarily but the more the table tilts to only the skilled players, the worse they will do. From the start WoW has been a home for more casual players. Despite the imaginings of those who wish the game to be an elitist paradise, it isn't, never has been and never will be. The notion that a game is better for being less accessible is just wrong in this game. OP has it wrong. If the developers have done anything wrong it's been to attempt to please the more hardcore element of their player base at the expense of the core group of players who has played from the start and for who the game was originally designed: The mass market of casual players.

This is so disappointing coming from you. The idea that any challenge is elitist is one of the things wrong with the game. Difficulty isn't the problem nor is it the reason people leave. Boredom is. Boredom isn't relieved by making boring things easier it's relieved by making boring things exciting and, in a game with a large player base, by making a variety of things that are all interesting to some part of that base.

Making things easy and focusing on one/a few things hurts those things. Easy games, whether video or real life, never hold attention, especially if there's little to no variety.

[nekobaka]

BING BING BING.

LK was the expansion that introduced bring the player not the class and started us down the road to homogenization. It was the expansion that introduced LFG which paved the way for LFR. Street has close to zero credibility on this unless he either a) reveals that he fought these things and lost and/or b) has learned that they're bad ideas and were a mistake to champion.

Mostly the later. By able late MoP GC talked about various mistakes made over the years from trying to take content away from others to shove them into LFR to how to make harder random queue heroics workable. There was also some displays of disagreement between the devs. GC defended for months dailies and activities outside of raiding while Watcher stabbed him in the back calling them mandatory which lead to the vast gutting of rewards across the board for the coming years and the expansion we know as WoD. Just about everything that GC came out saying was a mistake was made in WoD. GC also has mentioned a few times after leaving that he didnt fit so well with the Blizzard team and didnt like being gagged by corporate Blizzard. GC has for a long time been pro-dev communication with the community.

[Moonshield13]

I quit playing WoW seven months ago, but I was a veteran player who played since Vanilla participating in all facets of the game, either as hardcore or casual, and I've seen a gamut of different approaches Blizzard has taken toward gameplay design and implementation.

My two cents would be that Blizzard has attempted through previous years with continued popularity and a growing subscriber base to add varying types of content to please and attract a broader gaming audience. It achieved significant success for a period, but if there's been a correlation between adding multiple kinds and levels of gameplay for content and a decline of subscriber base paired with dissatisfaction of subscribers, I'd hypothesize that Blizzard has been too slow to add more content for those players of differing gameplay preferences, BECAUSE they're focusing too much on the differing types and levels of gameplay.

Given that Blizzard has a knack for iteration and improving on current in-game design, this hasn't helped to innovate or churn out more of the content that people already enjoy playing and expect to receive more.

Before I quit, I was in a Mythic guild still progressing through Hellfire Citadel, however I'd cleared it multiple times on lesser difficulties. I simply got bored killing the same bosses, albeit not all of them on Mythic, but Mythic provided a challenge as incentive for me to continue subscribing for just a period of time. Raiding has always been my go to preferred style of gameplay in WoW. I got tired of little variation in raids available, and different difficulties offered me the ability to see those raids to the end. Once I cleared a raid, I wanted new content, something else to explore.

Before LFR or hard modes were introduced, all players were funneled into the same difficulty, forcing them to commit to a schedule of raiding guilds. You could either do it, or you couldn't. If the next raid was introduced without you killing all the bosses of the previous raid, you either lingered to complete the raid you were still progressing through, or your guild jumped ahead to the next raid. This was done through catch up mechanics offered at the time (Wrath era). The time between raid patches was timed just right to allow a decent amount of time working on progression before the next tier was introduced. This was also the expansion Blizzard started experimenting with hard modes in Ulduar, it wasn't a core feature of a raid until TCC. It was that transition period between TCC and ICC that my current guild at the time split, because half of the people wanted to focus on 10 mans, and the other half wanted to continue via 25m. People in my guild felt they still received enough of a challenge via hard modes, regardless of 10m or 25m. BUT, content was still rolling out at a decent rate.

Suffice it to say that Blizzard hasn't released the same number of raid patches as previous expansions (Wrath and before), but I took frequent breaks after a raid was completed (Cata and later), regardless of difficulty, because too much time lapsed before the next raid tier was released. Perhaps for multiple reasons that subscribership has steadily declined after the initial release of an expansion, but one I hypothesize that has contributed greatly, is the fact that we've seen more levels of gameplay introduced, different types of gameplay introduced (pet battles, rated battlegrounds, mythic dungeons, etc.), and time between patches has increased and less patches per expansion released.

It seems blizzard spends much time and resources to cater to a broader audience to release content patches at a slower rate, which possibly results in shorter expansions with less content patches. It's unreasonable to expect the average player to be dedicated or interested to each and every facet of gameplay offered. If we were, then I'd say my argument is moot and baseless, but I speak from my experience and what I see on the forums and the fact that subscribers are down more than 50% from WoW's peak.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

WoW has been all about button smashing ever since BC once classes had rotations...

I know but mist rotation took no thought, they were brain dead/s.

[Tart]

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.

He's a fucking idiot and has ripped the heart from the game.

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This is so disappointing coming from you. The idea that any challenge is elitist is one of the things wrong with the game. Difficulty isn't the problem nor is it the reason people leave. Boredom is. Boredom isn't relieved by making boring things easier it's relieved by making boring things exciting and, in a game with a large player base, by making a variety of things that are all interesting to some part of that base.

Making things easy and focusing on one/a few things hurts those things. Easy games, whether video or real life, never hold attention, especially if there's little to no variety.

The carrot on the stick always kept me going to be honest. I wasn't up to the level but I knew if I kept chipping away I could. Now I don't have to chip away as it's right there on a plate.

[lockybalboa]

That was ironically his philosophy when he was lead!

[Deleted]

This is so disappointing coming from you. The idea that any challenge is elitist is one of the things wrong with the game.

People that like a challenge are not elitists. But people that like a challenge and expect everyone else to do the same otherwise they deserve nothing is being and elitist by the very definition.

Difficulty isn't the problem nor is it the reason people leave.

Well here you are wrong. If only one difficulty is available and it is the hard one, than people leave. This happened during Cata as Blizz confirmed: most people did quit over "hard heroics". And that was the first, until this event happening, the biggest loss WoW had to suffer.

Boredom is. Boredom isn't relieved by making boring things easier it's relieved by making boring things exciting and, in a game with a large player base, by making a variety of things that are all interesting to some part of that base.

Here you are partially right. Boredom is the reason for many people to quit. But boredom isn't tied to a high difficulty, cause very player out there has their own definition of "easy" and "hard". There is no such thing as "too easy for all players". In fact there are only a very (loud) few people for whom there is very little challenge. Most players in this day'n'age find it a big challenge to log in every day or even multiple times a day.... except it is a mobile game. Sure this is an extreme example, but i hope you get what i mean.

Making things easy and focusing on one/a few things hurts those things. Easy games, whether video or real life, never hold attention, especially if there's little to no variety.

Variety is the key word. The game needs both: a variety of things with lower difficulty and a long term goal as well as a high difficulty with a long term goal. But as i said: Boredom is a key factor for people to quit, but boredom isn't necessarily tight to a certain "hard difficulty".

[MoanaLisa]

People that like a challenge are not elitists. But people that like a challenge and expect everyone else to do the same otherwise they deserve nothing is being and elitist by the very definition.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts about elitism in the game. If I equated challenge with elitism that was not my intention. I do have a problem with those here who want the game to be as difficult as possible so that they can feel better about themselves, never mind the 49.9999% of everyone that clocks in as below average. I think that's extremely harmful. Nonetheless if I wasn't clear perhaps this will provide some clarity. The game has never had pretensions to being anything other than a mass-market game with a lot of different activities for people of different skill levels. For Blizzard, I think that's appropriate since that's pretty much the driving force behind how they design anything. Those that want LFR gone, pet battles gone, leveling ramped up to levels where a tank spec would have a strenuous time doing anything (never mind how healers need to deal with that) and reducing the choices that players of less skill now have for accessing pieces of the game are the problem. That's the elitism that I see and dislike.

[clevin]

People that like a challenge are not elitists. But people that like a challenge and expect everyone else to do the same otherwise they deserve nothing is being and elitist by the very definition.


Well here you are wrong. If only one difficulty is available and it is the hard one, than people leave. This happened during Cata as Blizz confirmed: most people did quit over "hard heroics". And that was the first, until this event happening, the biggest loss WoW had to suffer.


Here you are partially right. Boredom is the reason for many people to quit. But boredom isn't tied to a high difficulty, cause very player out there has their own definition of "easy" and "hard". There is no such thing as "too easy for all players". In fact there are only a very (loud) few people for whom there is very little challenge. Most players in this day'n'age find it a big challenge to log in every day or even multiple times a day.... except it is a mobile game. Sure this is an extreme example, but i hope you get what i mean.


Variety is the key word. The game needs both: a variety of things with lower difficulty and a long term goal as well as a high difficulty with a long term goal. But as i said: Boredom is a key factor for people to quit, but boredom isn't necessarily tight to a certain "hard difficulty".

You made the mistake of taking each sentence separately - the argument is one whole thing. Also, you're wrong mostly.

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This pretty much sums up my thoughts about elitism in the game. If I equated challenge with elitism that was not my intention. I do have a problem with those here who want the game to be as difficult as possible so that they can feel better about themselves, never mind the 49.9999% of everyone that clocks in as below average. I think that's extremely harmful. Nonetheless if I wasn't clear perhaps this will provide some clarity. The game has never had pretensions to being anything other than a mass-market game with a lot of different activities for people of different skill levels. For Blizzard, I think that's appropriate since that's pretty much the driving force behind how they design anything. Those that want LFR gone, pet battles gone, leveling ramped up to levels where a tank spec would have a strenuous time doing anything (never mind how healers need to deal with that) and reducing the choices that players of less skill now have for accessing pieces of the game are the problem. That's the elitism that I see and dislike.

Still disappointed. Most of what you're saying is still the same - that making things easier is always OK, but making things harder isn't, even though as you acknowledge they started pretty easy. If it's only OK to move in the direction of making things easier then you at some point wind up with a game that's so plain and devoid of challenge that it has no staying power.

What people keep missing is that challenge motivates people and makes games fun. That doesn't mean everything has to be super-hard, but without feelings of accomplishment you quickly lose interest in a game. Sure, you can play once for the story, but an easy game is like a beach read book - fun once, not something you do again. What that means for an MMO is that people leave.

Those that want LFR gone, pet battles gone, leveling ramped up to levels where a tank spec would have a strenuous time doing anything (never mind how healers need to deal with that) and reducing the choices that players of less skill now have for accessing pieces of the game are the problem. That's the elitism that I see and dislike.

This is the core of why you're wrong, i think. The game was fine pre-LFR in terms of player satisfaction and sub retention. It did great without pet battles. Yet as they've added those things subs have dwindled. If those were so compelling, if they were such great additions to the game, why aren't people staying? It's akin to the anti-flight people who argue that flight is bad for the game. Well, if no flying improves the game doe much why are subs declining???

Do I think they should remove LFR? Not at this point. It's too late for that. I wish they'd been able to do Flex in DS and introduced that instead, but that ship has sailed. Pet battles... I don't care. They could drop them, but unless doing that brought more core content, eh. (core content being new 5 mans post launch, new BGs, etc).

[SteveRocks]

https://twitter.com/OccupyGStreet/st...03361291833344

I agree and I think that this is one of the major problems with WoW today. In an effort to please new and casual players, they have watered down the game for the rest of the playerbase. Veteran players end up disappointed, and new players end up with a watered down experience that isn't enjoyable and don't stick around for.

1. Multiple difficulty raids - too many raid difficulties in an attempt to attract everyone into raiding has made the experience less enjoyable for many raiders.

2. "Infinite" difficulty dungeons - will be a much worse version to today's multiple raid difficulty problem. Instead of providing fine and tightly tuned encounters, everything will just receive indefinite HP and damage buffs, watering down the experience to increase participation.

3. "Railroad" questing - almost all of the questing is still on heavy railroads, removing the sense of adventure and exploration for the sake of convenience for the masses.

4. Homogenised professions - every profession levels up almost exactly the same and has been heavily streamlined to provide much more accessibility.

5. Ability pruning - many rotations are shells of their former selves in an attempt to make the game easier and more accessible for everyone.

And so on. Do you think that Blizzard has ended up pleasing nobody in their quest of trying to please everyone? Or have they managed to successfully cater to everybody?

1. Disagree
2. Disagree-New challenge mode dungeons look awesome
3. Disagree- Questing is not on "rails," and WoD had one of the best questing/leveling experiences to date.
4. Somewhat agree-How would you change professions to make them less homogenized?
5. Agree- Ability pruning has left many of the classes feeling a bit empty. However this doesn't make the game easier.

[Mytheros]

You do realise, OP, you are taking Greg's statement of "Don't be all things to all players" out of context right? He actually supports having much content of different variety highly accessible (when he worked for Blizzard and posted on the forums he often made comments supporting that very claim) ......however, when he said don't be all things to all players he means on the content like raiding -- if some people can't hack it ...then they can't hack it....

That's what he meant.