Ion: It's the Myhic guild leaders fault for burnout

[coño]

gas·light
/ˈɡaslīt/
verb
gerund or present participle: gas-lighting
manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
@Blizzard

[InfiniteCharger]

If blizzard is going to have an infinite power progression curve then there has to be an infinite content curve to go with it. Raids have fixed levels. There is no infinite progression curve to raiding. If that was the case then it would make sense to say that it is players fault. Otherwise, raids are tuned to specific levels of gear and power like they have always been and top players will always do what they have to to meet that level of gear and power.

It makes sense to have this infinite power curve in legion because the demons are supposedly infinite in the lore. But for some reason they didn't apply this to raiding or even in most dungeons by having randomized encounters and "infinite" styles of mythic raiding content at the top level. The only "infinite" content is in M+ dungeons and the soon to be released portal tokens on the broken shore, which means more opportunities for players to progress on the power curve "ad infinitum" but limited to no progression in terms of raiding content beyond mythic, which means absurdly tuned mythic raid encounters to counter the massive power creep in across the player base.

[IceMan1763]

Correct, which is why we all complained and dropped our subs during WoD. There was nothing left to do.

That argument holds zero water for me. What was Wrath's end game progression system besides raiding? Remember Wrath, the xpac that did away with grind at every opportunity and grew the game to 12 million subs? What Wrath had that WOD didn't was a plethora of dungeons and raids... that were well done and generally liked by the player base. Oh yeah, and decent PVP. And a big continent to explore. And flying. Explain how end game progression in Wrath and WOD was totally different... we're waiting.

WOD failed because it lacked a decent amount of ACTUAL end game content... garrisons and shipyards are facebook games come to WOW and weren't well received.

The design had to change to give the majority a reason to keep logging in. Mythic wasn't meant to be cleared in weeks, it was meant to last several months, and even then only to the best guilds. The problem comes back to people who either want everything now, or are so competitive, they play unhealthy amounts of time so they can beat random internet strangers at a game.

This game costs $200+ a year to play. That's plenty for the Devs to release ACTUAL content and not these craptastic systems designed to get you and your fellow fanbois to do the same things over and over again, then come on here and tell players who know better how these systems are needed. I would also like for you to explain how caps, which worked just fine for end game progression with token based gear, absolutely cannot work despite ACTUAL PAST IN GaME EXPERIENCE which show that they do, in fact, work.

[Osmeric]

Legion as an expansion is a good expansion, decent story, decent dungeons, raids, something to do but they went and fucked it up with AP farming.

People complain about WoD because all that world content it had was useless (in the sense of doing little or nothing to advance your character).

Without the AP grind, Legion would be much worse than WoD in that respect.

Blizzard is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Ultimately, the problems are probably sourced back to inexorable decline in revenue (and therefore development resources they are allocated) as the game winds down. The AP grind was an attempt to paper over the increasingly threadbare state of their expansions.

[Deleted]

Blah blah, quit playing.

[kamuimac]

Don't know about you but wod isn't that long ago.
.

and WoD was a good expansion in your eyes ?

i guess some people really would love wow to be lobby based raid symulator -_-

maybe blizzard really hsould think about like oem version of wow consisting exackly only of lobby and dungeons/raids. but having separate chars.

think about it it would use the same softare that is in game + lobby from HoTS

[Raelbo]

The problem is Blizzard designing a non fun mythic raid environment that values time investment above all else because they want to add an infinite grind and call it "content".

Did you even bother to listen to what Ion was saying? He was quite clear about what they want to achieve, and it was absolutely not what you are saying they want to achieve.

People played all day every day before and we didn't have this problem because there was some sanity still left on the Development team and they limited how far you could progress a single character (or in this case, spec) over a certain period of time. The design has changed, not the fundamental nature of the playerbase.

Nonsense. People have taken all manner of grinding to extremes for as long as this game has had competitive players. Here is one notable example (but they exist everywhere):

In MoP you had idiots complaining about the reputation grinds and the double gating of gear, never once stopping to think about how the system was designed to be played. So what you had was a bunch of people who spent hours each day doing ALL the dailies for ALL the factions to unlock the reputation requirements for gear they would not have the VP to buy for another 2 months. The design was to pace the reputation grind from dailies at a reasonable pace so that you could buy gear as you earned the VP, NOT to do all the rep grinding in the first month and then have nothing to do for the next 3. The idea behind removing the daily limit cap was to allow people the freedom to not have to do dailies every day (ie you could do all four factions every 4 days, or do 1 per day to get equal results). Instead some people felt compelled to do everything all at once, and then blame the devs for the "bad" design. /facepalm

The design ENCOURAGES as much grinding as possible because Blizzard somehow sees total play time as an indication of a healthy playerbase and sub retention. All they will get is a very unhealthy and quickly burnt out playerbase, however.

Sorry mate, but if this is the way you see it, you are playing the game wrong. The design ENCOURAGES people to play the game the way they like it. If you're not playing it the way you like it, it is YOUR fault.

Yes, yes, it is true that the game allows foolish people to burn themselves out. Unfortunately that is a side effect of making it flexible enough to allow the vast majority of sensible people to have the flexibility and freedom to play the game the way they like. This is a compromise that most sensible people seem to be quite comfortable with.


To me the intent of the artifact power system was so, so very obvious from the start. Because of the exponentially increasing rate of AP required to gain new traits, and because of the way AK effectively reduced the effort to get the AP every few days, it was an obvious choice: You could spend a lot of time grinding out AP to get a few traits ahead of the curve, or you could take it a bit easier and catch up in a week or two. If you were willing to put in more effort than those around you, you would be rewarded by having a bit of an advantage. But if you wanted to put in a bit less effort, you wouldn't fall that far behind.

By the time we reached rank 35, the obvious point at which the power gains dropped off significantly and also at which AK stopped gaining, you should already have established your rate of progression.

Sorry to have to be blunt about it, but the people who treated the AP acquisition process as a grind to do as rapidly as possible without any consideration for their own enjoyment or possible burnout really have only their own lack of forethought to blame.

[InfiniteCharger]

People complain about WoD because all that world content it had was useless (in the sense of doing little or nothing to advance your character).

Without the AP grind, Legion would be much worse than WoD in that respect.

Blizzard is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Ultimately, the problems are probably sourced back to inexorable decline in revenue (and therefore development resources they are allocated) as the game winds down. The AP grind was an attempt to paper over the increasingly threadbare state of their expansions.

The only reason they have a problem with content is because that content is "fixed" especially in dungeons. The bosses do the same thing every time no matter how many times you play it. There is very little replay value other than getting gear. And gear as the primary form of progression has always been the main factor behind running dungeons. There was no alternate means of getting that gear as part of progressions outside of dungeons/raids.

MOBAs are popular because they are dynamic, just like FPS games like Overwatch are popular because PVP is always different every time. It is the same "content" in the sense that the arenas and environments don't change, but the players and characters they play, the tactics they use and the weapons and abilities they use change constantly. If they want to extend content in a way that already appeals to a large portion of the game playing audience then adding more randomized content in dungeons would be the way to do it. Random boss adds, random abilities, random amounts of trash, random mini bosses and so forth would help extend the content in a way that could be reasonable. Of course that would also make the game more like D3 and maybe some folks won't like it. But unfortunately they have already started down that path. But if that D3 play style doesn't work out then they should remove all vestiges of it down the road and go back to what they used to do. AP and Paragon are D3 systems but the rest of the content isn't scaling to match it. If there is an infinite player power scaling curve there should be an infinite content scaling curve as well. Everything in Legion that is "new" is about scaling content, except raiding. You have scaling zones, you have scaling M+ dungeons...... Yet raids stay fixed at mythic.

Also, the biggest problem is RNG is not a good way to scale the game with an infinite power curve. Promotes to much of a range of power levels to tune against in fixed level content.

[Demeia]

The full answer he gave was, indeed, a bit rambling but it was quite a bit more "we're not sure what to do about this or even if we can do anything about this." It was gray and more nuanced than the OPs video and people should listen to that and judge. He knew what he was saying was controversial.

What I find amusing is that this is probably what Blizzard hoped would do split-runs in and instead just aggravated the situation. I think they honestly thought the RLs would say, "OK, we can't have them grind this many artifacts and legendaries force them to stay on their mains."

[potis]

People complain about WoD because all that world content it had was useless (in the sense of doing little or nothing to advance your character).

Without the AP grind, Legion would be much worse than WoD in that respect.

Blizzard is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Ultimately, the problems are probably sourced back to inexorable decline in revenue (and therefore development resources they are allocated) as the game winds down. The AP grind was an attempt to paper over the increasingly threadbare state of their expansions.

Exactly my point.

In terms of revenue, this AP design was probably a success if it made someone that would unsub 1 month after to unsub 2 or 3 months after to farm something they wished to unlock before they were gone, artifact skin or point or whatever.

Even if 1% more people unsubbed later it was a success, but for the rest players that play either way, its catastrophic.

[Deleted]

That argument holds zero water for me. What was Wrath's end game progression system besides raiding? Remember Wrath, the xpac that did away with grind at every opportunity and grew the game to 12 million subs? What Wrath had that WOD didn't was a plethora of dungeons and raids... that were well done and generally liked by the player base. Oh yeah, and decent PVP. And a big continent to explore. And flying. Explain how end game progression in Wrath and WOD was totally different... we're waiting.

WOD failed because it lacked a decent amount of ACTUAL end game content... garrisons and shipyards are facebook games come to WOW and weren't well received.



This game costs $200+ a year to play. That's plenty for the Devs to release ACTUAL content and not these craptastic systems designed to get you and your fellow fanbois to do the same things over and over again, then come on here and tell players who know better how these systems are needed. I would also like for you to explain how caps, which worked just fine for end game progression with token based gear, absolutely cannot work despite ACTUAL PAST IN GaME EXPERIENCE which show that they do, in fact, work.

Well spoken m8. Back then ycould farm for consumables watch some vids and be ready for raiding 3-4 times weekly. Outside that u could play an alt or even better farm argent crusade for vanity or even better lurk for that timelost proto .... atm even if they place something like that in game no one will ever notice because u got to grind endlessly to fix your raid performance.

[InfiniteCharger]

As a matter of fact even infinite power creep is not something liked in D3:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/20753236767

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/20752168196

So I don't see why they brought it to WOW.

[KaPe]

People complain about WoD because all that world content it had was useless (in the sense of doing little or nothing to advance your character).

Without the AP grind, Legion would be much worse than WoD in that respect.

Blizzard is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Ultimately, the problems are probably sourced back to inexorable decline in revenue (and therefore development resources they are allocated) as the game winds down. The AP grind was an attempt to paper over the increasingly threadbare state of their expansions.

The question is, would it be worse if it had 7.2 changes implemented from the very beginning? Vast majority of them don't even concern the average player. Guaranteed AP from raids? They barely raid enough for it to "trivialize" the grind and make them finish "too early". Bonus AP from weekly chest? They aren't doing M+ at a level which would offer truly big amounts. Less AP from spamming same dungeon? They don't do that anyway. More AP from doing longer dungeon? Makes perfect sense, kill more bosses, get more rewards.

And that's just the things that we are getting, not something that "would be nice to have" - like, say, character wide AP. I suppose Blizzard's excuse of "it would be weird if you switched weapon and had same amount of power" is kinda sorta reasonable, but only just barely. Would people unsubscribe immediately after realizing that their other specializations are just as strong as their main one? I somehow doubt it.

That's kind of the problem with this whole thing. It can be improved in multiple ways, none of which would affect the average player. However, some people believe that the only choice we're getting is between the current system and WoD. To them, Mythic raiders are these horrible elitists who want to lock casuals in garrisons and deny them any content. Ion statement, especially when taken out of context, is a proof of their "reasoning".

[cFortyfive]

Didn't fricking Paragon quit back in WoD?

Certainly guilds have quit all the time through all the addons. Not sure I remember that correctly but I think it was something about their limited recruitment pool with the whole Fin thing in Paragon's case. I also kinda misinterpreted highest level and more or less included up to the top 200 in there. For actual world first guilds probably nothing much has changed considering they were already investing basically as much time as even possible
Still the time investment required went way up since wod. You can't even do very simple things like switching to a better tuned spec without a significant time investment and that's probably one of the most common things you did to give you an edge. Pretty sure I already got the same /played I had for essentially two wod tiers and that's with more actual raid time so raiding in wod certainly appears quite casual by comparison.

and WoD was a good expansion in your eyes ?

i guess some people really would love wow to be lobby based raid symulator -_-

In terms of raiding it was fine. They simply released very little content during that time and since I am not personally enjoying endless, mindless grinds I can't find much appeal in the mythic+ system or perceive the world questing system as some revolutionary shit but at least they are getting some more content overall out for now.

So I don't see why they brought it to WOW.

If I had to guess because diablo 3 has still fantastic player numbers for the content it offers.

[RoKPaNda]

Ah yes lets fire a guy because he won't change the game for everyone to cater to 2% of the playerbase. Nah, he's got it right. It's not his problem if 2% of the playerbase can't control themselves.

[Deleted]

The problem is Blizzard designing a non fun mythic raid environment that values time investment above all else because they want to add an infinite grind and call it "content".

People played all day every day before and we didn't have this problem because there was some sanity still left on the Development team and they limited how far you could progress a single character (or in this case, spec) over a certain period of time. The design has changed, not the fundamental nature of the playerbase. The design ENCOURAGES as much grinding as possible because Blizzard somehow sees total play time as an indication of a healthy playerbase and sub retention. All they will get is a very unhealthy and quickly burnt out playerbase, however.

Those are a lot of weird assumptions.

[IceMan1763]

That's kind of the problem with this whole thing. It can be improved in multiple ways, none of which would affect the average player. However, some people believe that the only choice we're getting is between the current system and WoD. To them, Mythic raiders are these horrible elitists who want to lock casuals in garrisons and deny them any content. Ion statement, especially when taken out of context, is a proof of their "reasoning".

I don't get that "reasoning" either. There's also some on this forum who, for some godly unknown reason, believe you have to "earn" the right to compete for world firsts by no lifing it. I don't get that unless they're no lifing themselves and want to limit competition, but they seem to be casual players from what I can tell.

World firsts should have a more even playing field, in my opinion, and I simply don't have any time to compete for them anyway (although I have been in a top 100 raiding guild in the past), but I just don't get how they don't see that the entire mythic raiding community is effected when Blizzard tunes around the no lifers for mythic raiding. People who can't afford to no life it are forced to wipe for much longer and take much longer to clear content that they could've cleared in far less hours in previous xpacs. This is not due to lack of skill, but the lack of free time to spend outside of raiding grinding. You can basically prove this by comparing tiers from previous xpacs to mythic NH.

- - - Updated - - -

Those are a lot of weird assumptions.

They literally talked about how "non launch quarter total play time" was up last earnings call. It's probably one of the few positive metrics they could cherry pick, but I don't think presuming they want to increase sub retention is a "weird assumption". It's understandable, I just don't get why they didn't put REAL caps in place on things like AP gain and M+ loot. Caps for systems like that have been commonplace since the game launched.

Exponential caps or theoretical caps end up being only theoretical and promote exponential grinding, and thus, exponential burnout.

[Deleted]

I don't get that "reasoning" either. There's also some on this forum who, for some godly unknown reason, believe you have to "earn" the right to compete for world firsts by no lifing it. I don't get that unless they're no lifing themselves and want to limit competition, but they seem to be casual players from what I can tell.

World firsts should have a more even playing field, in my opinion, and I simply don't have any time to compete for them anyway (although I have been in a top 100 raiding guild in the past), but I just don't get how they don't see that the entire mythic raiding community is effected when Blizzard tunes around the no lifers for mythic raiding. People who can't afford to no life it are forced to wipe for much longer and take much longer to clear content that they could've cleared in far less hours in previous xpacs. This is not due to lack of skill, but the lack of free time to spend outside of raiding grinding. You can basically prove this by comparing tiers from previous xpacs to mythic NH.

- - - Updated - - -



They literally talked about how "non launch quarter total play time" was up last earnings call. It's probably one of the few positive metrics they could cherry pick, but I don't think presuming they want to increase sub retention is a "weird assumption". It's understandable, I just don't get why they didn't put REAL caps in place on things like AP gain and M+ loot. Caps for systems like that have been commonplace since the game launched.

Exponential caps or theoretical caps end up being only theoretical and promote exponential grinding, and thus, exponential burnout.

For that 2% of playerbase that cannot control themselves yes.
Watch me care.

[IceMan1763]

For that 2% of playerbase that cannot control themselves yes.
Watch me care.

For the 100th time, when they tune around the 2%, the entire mythic raiding community is effected. Especially those who, in fact, CAN control themselves.

[Deleted]

For the 100th time, when they tune around the 2%, the entire mythic raiding community is effected. Especially those who, in fact, CAN control themselves.

You're miles away.