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

[Hofflerand]

For example 2 different players, both enjoy PvE but 1 enjoys Pet Battles and 1 does not. INSTANTLY you have 2 players that enjoy a core part of the game but have 1 player who will complain that they hate Pet Battles because they don't like it and don't see it as content vs the other player that enjoys Pet Battles and wants more of it as content.

This happens a lot in WoW, the issue is morons that play this game automatically think that because they don't like something that nobody likes it. I often post on this forum the statement "Content you don't like is still content" whenever someone moans about having nothing to do and people give them a bunch of things to do and they respond with "nah that is shit, it's not content I want REAL content".

I think you're being willfully ignorant when you place pet battles on the same level as say a dungeon or even PvP. There's a stark difference when you actually play your character. Pet battles are like chocobo racing in FF7 - I'm sure some people loved it, but at the end of the day it's a minigame.

[Pantalaimon]

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?

I agree that Blizzard has failed with their approach at trying to be all things to all players, but I don't see it the way that you do. I generally don't view that increasing accessibility causes this, but I I feel that trying to totally splinter the identity of a single type of content to appease many crowds does this. For example, if LFR was meant, among other things, to act as a catch up mechanic why do they then also strip it of the tier gear & trinkets that everyone else is getting?

As for your points,

I fail to see how having multiple difficulties for the same raid makes it less enjoyable for other more experienced raiders. Is your guild forcing you to farm lower difficulties for trinkets or tier gear? If so, maybe that is just a problem with your guild or a conflict of interest between what your guild wants out of raiding & what you want. Unless you're pushing for serious progression races there is no reason you need to farm difficulty levels outside of whichever difficulty you prefer doing.

You don't understand Mythic+ dungeons in Legion by the way you're describing them. Trash & bosses receiving higher & higher number or mechanic buffs with each successive level difficulty doesn't water down the participation. The content becoming harder & harder is the exact opposite of content being watered down. Even if the very first wave, or three, or five levels aren't "fine & tightly tuned" for everyone eventually each type of player will hit their wall for mythic+ & that wall will be there tightly tuned five man until they improve.

I'm fine with a mix of on & off rail questing so don't have much to say about this.

I agree that professions are a joke with the garrisons, but I don't want them to be punishingly restrictive & massively time consuming for even the poor quality gear either. Professions didn't need as much accessibility as we have now, but it certainly did need it. There is a good reason why so many guild officers loathe having to do weekly professions chores to help their guild, & why so many people simply choose to buy crafted raid professions gear as opposed to making it themselves.

Ability pruning is a necessary evil & isn't just about accessibility. The system for character levels & progression is outdated & causes problems. With every expansion each spec gets about 2 new abilities. Now, say you didn't revamp how the leveling system rewarded players' characters, how massive do you think player rotations would be in 10 years with no pruning? That's potentially ten new abilities added to each spec. Would each class even be able to perform their full massive rotation before the first ability in the rotation/priority was off of its cooldown again? You also need to consider how the leveling system directly affects pvp & raiding with each new ability. Again, unless you revamped what the leveling system awarded players with (namely, how it only awards the trio of passives, long cooldowns, or shorter rotational abilities) then you're going to have a shitfest in raiding and pvp. No ability pruning means that in pvp not only does pvp stay a game based on destroying the other dudes with timing all of your long cooldowns at the right time, but that just gets worse with each expansion's new added long cooldowns if pruning doesn't happen. The same thing happens in raiding with no pruning, except boss damage just gets back to MoP level spike/near instant one shot levels in order to compensate for powerful player cooldowns that would never get pruned. Raid boss damage would exponentially get much worse with no pruning. This topic alone should have its own thread & most definitely cannot be boiled down to being caused by providing "...much more accessibility". That is a cop out answer.

[Super Kami Dende]

I think you're being willfully ignorant when you place pet battles on the same level as say a dungeon or even PvP. There's a stark difference when you actually play your character. Pet battles are like chocobo racing in FF7 - I'm sure some people loved it, but at the end of the day it's a minigame.

How is that being willfully ignorant? I've spent more time doing Pet battles in WoD than I did in both Dungeons or PvP combined.

There is no "Stark difference" since all 3 of them require you to be PLAYING THE GAME. playing you character is irrelevant to the point.

Technically PvP is a Minigame.

[Lady Dragonheart]

I think that you have the idea mostly backwards...

[ImpTaimer]

Coming from the guy who belittled and butchered the class system just get it dumbed down.

"Bring the player, not the class" my ass. Now he's claiming "If you can't do it, don't worry about it." Yeah that's really fucking classy, just like the "You don't have <insert thing>" memers protecting their secret clubs.

Why does this website keep giving that joke attention? Are we going to start praising Jay Wilson when he leaves the company as if he had a positive impact on it?

[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.

Except the ability pruning has left PVP in a state that is unplayable.

[Jtbrig7390]

So when are people going to stop listening to a guy who doesn't even work for blizzard anymore.

How is his multi-billion dollar MMO going?

[lightz]

Ghostcrawler hit the nail on the head with that post

[Pantalaimon]

Except the ability pruning has left PVP in a state that is unplayable.

In Vanilla & BC each class had fewer abilities overall when compared to now, I'm sure pvp will survive.

[Karaoke]

"Don't try to be all things to all players" Sounds like good advice but is bullshit when it comes to implementation.

It's probably been mentioned already, but let's look at Wildstar. The game was made for the 'hardcore raiders' or however you want to label it. Where is that game?

[Deleted]

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

This is the definition of Ghostcrawler himself.

It's him who is giving the most blank answers to every question with absolutely no meaning at all. He is afraid to offend people because their ideas might be different. He is afraid of giving out his thoughts, ideas or even plans which are already set and worked on.
Did you read his twitter posts at all?

[Eroginous]

This is the definition of Ghostcrawler himself.

It's him who is giving the most blank answers to every question with absolutely no meaning at all. He is afraid to offend people because their ideas might be different. He is afraid of giving out his thoughts, ideas or even plans which are already set and worked on.
Did you read his twitter posts at all?

When you're acting as the PR buffer between a community and a company, it's probably not in anyone's best interest if you speak on your own behalf.

[Unholyground]

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.

Here here! You hit it on the head, people need to stop worrying about what many others enjoy.

[Deleted]

Way to put a spin on what Ghostcrawler said to push your own agenda of insecurities.

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Except the ability pruning has left PVP in a state that is unplayable.

Factually incorrect hyperbolic statement.

Nothing of value added.

[Pull My Finger]

Except the ability pruning has left PVP in a state that is unplayable.

We'll see. The state PvP has been in recent years is closer to what I'd call "unplayable" - although I'm not a fan of hyperbole. I expect it to be a lot better now with the pruning.

[Foj]

WoW has quite successfully been mostly-all things to mostly-all players for over a decade.

This is one of the areas where I think GC, when he opines on this particular topic, is dead wrong. It's the #1 area where his design philosophy has been completely at odds with what has made WoW successful over the years.

[Deleted]

WoW has quite successfully been mostly-all things to mostly-all players for over a decade.

This is one of the areas where I think GC, when he opines on this particular topic, is dead wrong. It's the #1 area where his design philosophy has been completely at odds with what has made WoW successful over the years.

The game was not very suitable for a player who wants to pick up and drop a game when they feel like it. They added features to make it easier now, but in the end there's nothing they can do about needing other players to do the real endgame content. I too noticed this because I'm getting older and I can't get addicted to games like I used to. I love WoW for raiding and social mostly but I'd rather not just be standing in my garrison. I don't really want to switch to an over populated server just because the only people who use trade chat these days is gold sellers.