Randomness vs determination

[ThunderTaco]

Of course they can start sooner, when they work on the expansion they need to think about the content patches. Make estimates when these need to be done and have people work on them too, if the time it takes to finish the content patch demands it.

They don't finish the expansion and then start thinking and working on new content patches... well if they do, they do their job wrong.

No if people consume it faster then they can produce it, they need to have start working on new content sooner. Hell they have the biggest team ever, so it should not be a problem to work on two content patches simultaniously so they never run into the problem of "people just consume too fast".

"If I were to buy cocaine, my dealer better not stretch that shit with flour." - Same goes for WoW, if they content is so little for such amounts of time, maybe they need to rethink their content models.

You seem to ignore that they already do that. When WoD was about to be released they said they were already working on the next expansion.
Working sooner doesn't mean the content will last longer. You clearly don't understand how software development works.

Comparing software development to drug dealing, because it's totally the same, your dealer has to think about new products and recreate different drugs all the time right ?

[Deleted]

You seem to ignore that they already do that. When WoD was about to be released they said they were already working on the next expansion.
Working sooner doesn't mean the content will last longer. You clearly don't understand how software development works.

Comparing software development to drug dealing, because it's totally the same, your dealer has to think about new products and recreate different drugs all the time right ?

Next expansion IS NOT a content patch. Do you even think bro?

Of course starting to work sooner doesn't mean content lasts longer, how could it? But starting sooner makes new content ready when old one becomes stale!

I study software development... that's why I base my arguments on the process of PROPER software development.

Should I gone with chocolate chip cookies, but instead of chocolate chips they put in raisins?`Look, if you don't understand a metaphor, that's not my problem.
Actually yes "my" dealer has to do that, since most addicts run out of money fast and want stronger stuff for less money... Otherwise the whole chemical drugs wouldn't exist.

[Mhyroth]

A lot of people will be polarized on this on MMO-C, and honestly you probably won't get a realistic or sensible answer here. A conversation like this is pretty difficult. I'm not saying my point of view is particularly stronger but I would like to think it's a lot more reasonable, if nothing else...

I love determined progression, but I can absolutely get what Blizzard means when they say that it risks running stale. It does.
RNG is good for that reason, and I can understand the merits of it as well as why they're leaning towards it currently. The new system in Legion sounds far, far better than what we had in WoD and I'd even go so far as to say the loot system currently in WoD is the absolute worst idea of RNG loot you can possibly have, and Legion is a massive step in the right direction. The idea of entering a normal dungeon and possibly getting loot that will last you until heroic raiding is insane but it really doesn't devalue heroic raiding because of the sheer difficulty in actually obtaining something like that. The idea is that you engage in more difficult content to more consistently and efficiently obtain gear, not for higher ilvl.

Pre-determined loot for a grind each week is a system I absolutely love (RIP valor points) but in my personal opinion, there's a sweet spot between the RNG and gradual progression that Blizzard seems to be missing, and it gives me a pretty big hunch that they're a bit out of touch with the gaming mentality if they don't see it. Where is that middle ground? Well...I think it should be obvious.
Why not just have both systems?
Have gear available for Valor Points again, and have the RNG loot system as well. Increase the amount of time needed for each piece of VP gear, and reimplement the weekly cap. Players will grind for their VP, giving them a long-term safety net while also having the occasional awesome upgrade sprinkled in. Better yet, if tier was placed on the VP vendor, players wouldn't have to totally rely on RNG or LFR(shudder) for these items. This would be a win-win system for basically everyone, giving players a predictable, smooth flow of progression while also having the sudden "holy shit awesome" moments that other players enjoy. Would there be moments of "fuck you blizzard I just bought tier gloves and now awesome titanforged gloves drop"? No doubt, but c'mon, that's not a lot different than the system we already had for years.

I agree with this post, it's a hard thing to balance and we see Blizzard's intentions.

Gains through RNG without an idealistic time frame imbues frustration to those who're dedicated in achieving what they want. If someone logs on for a week straight and doesn't get the piece they want vs. someone who logs in one time and gets that exact piece. You don't feel rewarded by getting the piece, your frustration rather subsides because it took so fucking long. Is that what they consider excitement? Who knows. How variable the RNG will be hard to say until live hits so it's all speculation at this point.

This is also a well-written explanation of the issue.

Thanks both for the in-depth replies since every time I try to explain this to people they just break down the arguements. Yours make sense and should be read by more people.

[Avalrand]

I wouldn't say grinding currency to purchase piece of gear is more exciting than the possibility of being lucky and getting a very nice piece of gear.

But it is absolutely more satisfying.


Getting lucky and being awarded a nice piece of gear is exciting. But the dozens of times you have to "roll" until you get lucky are overal underwhelming, annoying, and just bland really. More often than not, you've essentially done a bunch of content, spent a bunch of time, only for a chance, essentially doing 0 progress on your character power.

Currency might be grindy, but every piece of content you do is guaranteed progress, is getting a tiny bit closer to being able to get a piece of gear. You never really "waste" time because even if you don't get any items from random drops, at least you got a bit more currency. And that is very satisfying for me, and imho very fitting of a MMORPG.

Actually, this.

Many people hated MoP dailies, but I loved them. In fact, I was a newbie back then and I wanted to raid. 489 valor items were quite good, but they were gated behind reputation. For every Exalted there also was one free item. So, I made for myself a list of dailies to do every day. I counted, that in 23 days I will finish Golden Lotus and will receive my 489 ring. In 19 days I will finish Klaxxi and will obtain my 489 necklace. Every day I knew that I'm closer to my goal now. And I was very happy at the end of the way.

You can imagine, no way the new player could get BiS from Mythic (Heroic back then) raid. But I could get BiS from Normal, and I also was excited receiving my epics from HoF and ToES. Since ToT it became much harder to obtain BiS from any difficulty (though, Heroic Warforged Fabled Feather of Ji-Kun was extremely exciting to roll from the coin). Since WoD it became impossible. In Legion it will become even worse.

I don't see how MASSIVE RNG is exciting. When I was doing dailies I knew when I'll receive a reward. With RNG I can never be sure. For example, at the beginning of the week in HFC I had 30/33 Thomes. I had very good mood, because I was going to obtain my Legendary ring after raid and next night obtain Crystallized Fel from Archimonde. I received 2 Thomes from 12 bosses. I was mad by the end of the raid night to the extent I wanted to delete my character and stop playing.

The last Thome dropped from Archimonde, but I wasn't eligible to obtain Fel from him anymore. I've lost a week of ring upgrading because of RNG.

Also, loot. HFC is a bad example due to staggered ilvl, but the concept is the same. I received 730 axe from Zakuun. The feeling was "Well, it can be warforged or with socket or with tertiary". In a few weeks I got socketed 730 axe. The feeling was "Well, it can be also warforged or with tertiary". Socketed tinket dropped from Mythic Archimonde: "It still can be warfoged, it isn't BiS". It isn't BiS - it is only the shadow of BiS. I will never receive that warforged socketed trinket with leech. No matter how many times I will kill Mythic Archimonde - the chance is lower than Reings of Invincible.

In Legion I will possibly get a 880 + 10 + socket + leech trinket. But it still won't be the best, because 880 + 15 + socket + leech version exists. Players now can't have best items. There is no fun in obtaining loot since WoD. I understand that loot is only a pleasant bonus to actually killing a hard boss but I don't see why Blizzard removed that enjoyment.

[Leih]

In Legion I will possibly get a 880 + 10 + socket + leech trinket. But it still won't be the best, because 880 + 15 + socket + leech version exists. Players now can't have best items. There is no fun in obtaining loot since WoD. I understand, that loot is only a pleasant bonus to actually killing a hard boss, but I don't see why Blizzard did remove that enjoyment.

I am referring specifically to the bolded part of the quote when I say I think players of the modern game have mentality problems when loot just isn't enjoyable or exciting to them unless it's the very best ultimate BIS perfect version of the item they want.

I think if you get a 880+10+socket+leech trinket you should be pretty fucking happy. So there is a potential +5 ilvls version out there, why does that make your version completely uninteresting and worthless? The content isn't TUNED for having the ultimate BiS set of gear... it's not an expectation for anyone that you should have that. All it means is there's still the potential you could still have something to gain from doing that content in future.

Why do you NEED to have a set of full BiS gear to be happy about getting an item? It seems so strange to me.

[Avalrand]

I think players of the modern game have mentality problems when loot just isn't enjoyable or exciting to them unless it's the very best ultimate BIS perfect version of the item they want.

I think if you get a 880+10+socket+leech trinket you should be pretty fucking happy. So there is a potential +5 ilvls version out there, why does that make your version completely uninteresting and worthless? The content isn't TUNED for having the ultimate BiS set of gear... it's not an expectation for anyone that you should have that. All it means is there's still the potential you could still have something to gain from doing that content in future.

Why do you NEED to have a set of full BiS gear to be happy about getting an item? It seems so strange to me.

I understand that it's my perfectionist mentality problem but I can do nothing with it. Everything which is not the best are things you are going to replace. You can't feel like "my precious" because you know that next week you might receive another item. You never feel accomplished.

Sure, all loot becomes rubbish when next content is relesed, but still there used to be months / weeks / days when you have the best item you can get. This isn't a necessity, but it is enjoyable.

[Deleted]

I understand that it's my perfectionist mentality problem but I can do nothing with it. Everything which is not the best are things you are going to replace. You can't feel like "my precious" because you know that next week you might receive another item. You never feel accomplished.

Sure, all loot becomes rubbish when next content is relesed, but still there used to be months / weeks / days when you have the best item you can get. This isn't a necessity, but it is enjoyable.

Do the MoP and WoD legendaries felt like "my precious" tho ? They were absolute best in slot for every classes. I've never felt any proud of it even if the slot was locked and it was sad to see cloak drop back in MoP, just a waste of loot.

However, my mythic warforged socket Hellrender, I absolutely loved it, because it felt special because it was rare. I don't think the "my precious" argument goes really to the non-RNG side. Nevertheless I understand that you never feel accomplished with the unability to be full BiS but I don't really know how to solve the issue for both sides.

[ThunderTaco]

Next expansion IS NOT a content patch. Do you even think bro?

Of course starting to work sooner doesn't mean content lasts longer, how could it? But starting sooner makes new content ready when old one becomes stale!

I study software development... that's why I base my arguments on the process of PROPER software development.

Should I gone with chocolate chip cookies, but instead of chocolate chips they put in raisins?`Look, if you don't understand a metaphor, that's not my problem.
Actually yes "my" dealer has to do that, since most addicts run out of money fast and want stronger stuff for less money... Otherwise the whole chemical drugs wouldn't exist.

I never saidthey were the same, I was just trying to tell you that they think about future content and patches all the time, since you seem to think they don't.

They work 100% of the time on making new content (without taking into account vacations, week-ends and stuff, of course), they can't just "start sooner". What takes time is creating new art, developping new systems and testing/tuning them, you just can't make that part faster by "starting sooner", you can hire more people but then it's harder to coordinate everyone.

Not my problem if your metaphors are bad and don't help your point. You want Blizzard to treat you like an addict ? Giving you everytime less "new content" and more generic stuff to make the content seem big and keep you busy ? Because I don't.

[Deleted]

I never saidthey were the same, I was just trying to tell you that they think about future content and patches all the time, since you seem to think they don't.

They work 100% of the time on making new content (without taking into account vacations, week-ends and stuff, of course), they can't just "start sooner". What takes time is creating new art, developping new systems and testing/tuning them, you just can't make that part faster by "starting sooner", you can hire more people but then it's harder to coordinate everyone.

Not my problem if your metaphors are bad and don't help your point. You want Blizzard to treat you like an addict ? Giving you everytime less "new content" and more generic stuff to make the content seem big and keep you busy ? Because I don't.

I don't want them to just think, but act on it. Which they didn't do in WoD.

Do you think all content is done by the whole team? No, it's split into parts and done by a small team. (or at least should be done that way) So just have the quest team start working on new quest content 2 weeks earlier and you get content two weeks earlier. It's not that hard.
Content patches rarely have new mechanics so that argument is BS. Art is the first thing done, so they have the most time to start the next project.

I NEVER said faster, if you start earlier you finish earlier! That's how TIME works! And MORE people make most projects go slower!

Read the metaphor again, I want them to give me the pure and good stuff, not the stretched out shit!

[ThunderTaco]

I don't want them to just think, but act on it. Which they didn't do in WoD.

Do you think all content is done by the whole team? No, it's split into parts and done by a small team. (or at least should be done that way) So just have the quest team start working on new quest content 2 weeks earlier and you get content two weeks earlier. It's not that hard.
Content patches rarely have new mechanics so that argument is BS. Art is the first thing done, so they have the most time to start the next project.

I NEVER said faster, if you start earlier you finish earlier! That's how TIME works! And MORE people make most projects go slower!

Read the metaphor again, I want them to give me the pure and good stuff, not the stretched out shit!

Again, how do you want the art team to start working sooner ? They are busy finishing the previous patch. You want the team working on patch 6.1 to start working on patch 6.2 on month earlier ? Fine, but then patch 6.1 isn't done because they left out one month of work.

You want the pure and good stuff but you don't want them to finish content ? How will that work out ?

[Avalrand]

Do the MoP and WoD legendaries felt like "my precious" tho ? They were absolute best in slot for every classes. I've never felt any proud of it even if the slot was locked and it was sad to see cloak drop back in MoP, just a waste of loot.

However, my mythic warforged socket Hellrender, I absolutely loved it, because it felt special because it was rare. I don't think the "my precious" argument goes really to the non-RNG side.

I agree, they didn't feel like "my precious" because everyone had them. The same problem will be with the artifact. Every 101 lvl paladin will have an Ashbringer. I doubt that anyone will feel like it's really legendary Tirion Fordring's sword which he used to break the Frostmourne. But it is a problem of accessibility, not a problem of RNG / grind. I think, if you need to kill 30 Mythic bosses to receive the BiS, it will feel much better, than if you need to kill 30 bosses on any difficulty (including LFR) to receive the BiS.

Also, cloaks realy shouldn't have dropped in SoO. It was a bad design. They could sell with Valor 540 cloak for alts and newcomers.

Nevertheless I understand that you never feel accomplished with the unability to be full BiS but I don't really know how to solve the issue for both sides.

Pre-ToT MoP system was perfect, in my opinion. You have RNG raid drops, and you can also grind reputations and Valor to buy some good quality items. ToT system also was good. You still could buy items with Valor, and Thunderforged was dropping often enough (100% chance for Ra-Den) to be able to earn BiS in every slot (in fact, only top guild players did this, but it still was possible). SoO system was worse because of no Valor gear and useless cloak drops.

[Deleted]

Again, how do you want the art team to start working sooner ? They are busy finishing the previous patch. You want the team working on patch 6.1 to start working on patch 6.2 on month earlier ? Fine, but then patch 6.1 isn't done because they left out one month of work.

You want the pure and good stuff but you don't want them to finish content ? How will that work out ?

They don't need the WHOLE art team, they don't have the 200+ people there working on ONE SINGLE Patch. Because if they do that, they KNOW NOTHING about software development. You split the project in small chunks, and to them in smaller teams.

And if you shift ALL work two weeks earlier, there is no problem. Not just one part, but THE WHOLE process.

[Deleted]

I agree, they didn't feel like "my precious" because everyone had them. The same problem will be with the artifact. Every 101 lvl paladin will have an Ashbringer. I doubt that anyone will feel like it's really legendary Tirion Fordring's sword which he used to break the Frostmourne. But it is a problem of accessibility, not a problem of RNG / grind. I think, if you need to kill 30 Mythic bosses to receive the BiS, it will feel much better, than if you need to kill 30 bosses on any difficulty (including LFR) to receive the BiS.

Also, cloaks realy shouldn't have dropped in SoO. It was a bad design. They could sell with Valor 540 cloak for alts and newcomers.

Pre-ToT MoP system was perfect, in my opinion. You have RNG raid drops, and you can also grind reputations and Valor to buy some good quality items. ToT system also was good. You still could buy items with Valor, and Thunderforged was dropping often enough (100% chance for Ra-Den) to be able to earn BiS in every slot (in fact, only top guild players did this, but it still was possible). SoO system was worse because of no Valor gear and useless cloak drops.

One issue is how do you give valor and what amount cost what kind of stuff ?
There will be issues if you buy heroic stuf with valor that you can get with LFR or NM for instance. The major problem of valor is that it is an universal currency for different kind of rewards. In theory, you could make 3 kind of valor, for each organized raid difficulty, rewarding gear of the according difficulty, but it will be kinda dull during progress and won't feel rewarding, it's like a 4th place prize.
I'd rather have the RNG with a safer net than "there is a system against bad luck" like the Fel cristal for the ring but to upgrade an item up to Titanforged.

They don't need the WHOLE art team, they don't have the 200+ people there working on ONE SINGLE Patch. Because if they do that, they KNOW NOTHING about software development. You split the project in small chunks, and to them in smaller teams.

And if you shift ALL work two weeks earlier, there is no problem. Not just one part, but THE WHOLE process.

What ThunderTaco said is Blizzard is already working full time with their team. They don't sleep at work waiting for the next content to be released. If you want to start like 7.2 ealier, you will need to cut content from 7.1 since they are working on it.

[Deleted]

What ThunderTaco said is Blizzard is already working full time with their team. They don't sleep at work waiting for the next content to be released. If you want to start like 7.2 ealier, you will need to cut content from 7.1 since they are working on it.

Because I like to repeat myself:
"They don't need the WHOLE art team, they don't have the 200+ people there working on ONE SINGLE Patch. Because if they do that, they KNOW NOTHING about software development. You split the project in small chunks, and to them in smaller teams."

[ThunderTaco]

They don't need the WHOLE art team, they don't have the 200+ people there working on ONE SINGLE Patch. Because if they do that, they KNOW NOTHING about software development. You split the project in small chunks, and to them in smaller teams.

And if you shift ALL work two weeks earlier, there is no problem. Not just one part, but THE WHOLE process.

You seem to think that they have employees doing nothing, waiting for the content to be considered finished to start working again.

Let's say there is team A working on finishing 7.0 for the launch, meanwhile you think team B is waiting for us to finish 7.0 content before doing anything ? No, if there's a team B, they are already working on 7.1, and if there's a team C, they are already working on 7.2 or 8.0, but they are not waiting, they can't start working sooner because they are already working.

[Deleted]

Because I like to repeat myself:
"They don't need the WHOLE art team, they don't have the 200+ people there working on ONE SINGLE Patch. Because if they do that, they KNOW NOTHING about software development. You split the project in small chunks, and to them in smaller teams."

Obviously not everyone is working on wow otherwise projects like hearthstone wouldn't exist. Of those that do work on wow everything goes to the next addon. The only option they have is cut a bit off and deliver it as a patch instead of putting it into the next addon as a feature but as earlier said it's likely less profitable so why would they do that?

End result is no patches and everything produced is used to sell the next addon.

[Toppy]

Let the subscription numbers talk once legion launches because blizzard outright refuses to listen to feedback regarding anything.

[Deleted]

You seem to think that they have employees doing nothing, waiting for the content to be considered finished to start working again.

Let's say there is team A working on finishing 7.0 for the launch, meanwhile you think team B is waiting for us to finish 7.0 content before doing anything ? No, if there's a team B, they are already working on 7.1, and if there's a team C, they are already working on 7.2 or 8.0, but they are not waiting, they can't start working sooner because they are already working.

If that is so, why do they still have problems giving us content when it's needed? Somewhere something must be off!

[Echocho]

I think this is going to backfire big time. If people don't know specifically what they can get and what the odds are or how long it will take most of them just won't bother. That's why you see very few people playing D3 for long periods of time.

I'm gonna take my business to another MMORPG with a better character progression system once I've seen all the dungeons and raids in WoW at their lowest difficulty, there's really no point in progressing further when there's no end in sight.

[Fenderxx]

Though the gear you get from pvp is totally RNG, does it make a difference to the pvp community that you can target key pieces by completing world quests or running Mythic 5-man content? I believe Blizzard is thinking that if PvP gear was a currency and you could grind it out.. and it was the same quality of questing/dungeon content.. then people would not do quest or dungeons because they could just grind BG's and buy the gear.. thus making that content useless, like we saw in WoD. You also don't want to make the PvP gear worse than that content because then the PvP community will feel slighted and again forced (forced being the key word) to do other content in order to PvP. I don't know the answer and these are just my thoughts, so I am more curious what others think.