Do more player hours = successful game?

[MoanaLisa]

Player engagement as measured by how much they play and for how long is as valid a metric as any after sales.

If you don't care for the repetition, gating and the RNG of the reward system, go play something else. Games are designed for specific audiences and this design seems to be working out for them based on their own words.

Arguably, more engagement = better game. Just because you don't care for it styil, doesn't mean it's not successful. You hate nearly everything in the game anyway as evidenced by your many threads so why torture yourself about it.

[Granyala]

If I feel forced to play a lot in order to maintain a raid spot, burnout and me leaving is just a matter of time.
So "hours spent" certainly is not a foolproof way to determine whether a game is actually fun to the players.

[MoanaLisa]

If I feel forced to play a lot in order to maintain a raid spot, burnout and me leaving is just a matter of time.
So "hours spent" certainly is not a foolproof way to determine whether a game is actually fun to the players.

That's social pressure though and a construct of how your guild operates. I get your point but I'd rather Blizzard make their game and try to minimize the social engineering. To some extent playing a lot in and of itself extends advantages to players on its own. I agree that engagement isn't foolproof as a metric but believe it to be perfectly valid for something that is experienced over days, weeks or months.

[Granyala]

I really dont think Legion requires the amount of time sink people claim it does

Legion only takes a crapton of time if you try to brutforce the AP grind or want to bruteforce gear-up via Mythic dungeon loot RNG.

If you play normally, like you would have in other expansions, player power would come a bit slower but still at a reasonable rate.
It's the "need to be better than the next guy" mindset that makes people (esp wannabe-hardcore mythic raiders) go nuts and burn out.

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That's social pressure though and a construct of how your guild operates.

Like it or not, WoW is a social game, esp in the raiding department.
People get compared to each other all the time and there will always be no-lifers that go insane and set higher "standards" for the rest.
People WILL get benched if they refuse the effort if the guild is in a position to choose.
My guild is far from hardcore, but even from my comfy rocking-chair of retirement I get to witness the strain on them raiders.

Surely happy that I AM a retiree and get to slack it.

[Deleted]

I don't get these complaints. My character is stronger now in Legion then it ever has been with equal input of Work prior to final patch Content in any other expansion.

I literally hit 110 on a new Alt 2 weeks ago and he is already geared for heroic Nighthold with hardly any effort.

I think what you describe is exactly the problem for many players, including myself. That is not good nor fun gameplay. That is borderline equal to a rts or moba.

[Granyala]

I think what you describe is exactly the problem for many players, including myself. That is not good nor fun gameplay. That is borderline equal to a rts or moba.

Well some people like that you get raid ready quickly.
Others dislike getting to the point of "raid only" too quickly.

Can't please everyone.

[hyphnos]

That's social pressure though and a construct of how your guild operates. I get your point but I'd rather Blizzard make their game and try to minimize the social engineering. To some extent playing a lot in and of itself extends advantages to players on its own. I agree that engagement isn't foolproof as a metric but believe it to be perfectly valid for something that is experienced over days, weeks or months.

Engagement is a horrible metric when you have a system that is set up to drive players towards certain activities via a reward system. Since a reward system is mandatory, there should be a measure of "engagement" that is apart from that - ie, is this fun in and of itself or am I doing this for the reward from it so that I can do something else that I like.

Blizzard way overfocuses on how people play the game and way underfocuses on whether or not they are having fun rather than checking boxes that say X content is a "success" because we managed to get X% of people to do it by whatever means necessary.

[MoanaLisa]

Engagement is a horrible metric when you have a system that is set up to drive players towards certain activities via a reward system.

Games usually offer some sort of reward for certain activities within the game. You've just described nearly every video game ever made.

[hyphnos]

Games usually offer some sort of reward for certain activities within the game. You've just described nearly every video game ever made.

I didn't say that a reward system was bad. I'm saying that looking at what players do and concluding that everything is great because players did it for the reward isn't what they should be looking at.

Blizzard never, ever asks or seems to try to figure out whether players are doing something because they like it or because they are being paid to do it via the reward system. I have no doubt they could get 100% of players to do pet battles if they rewarded raid loot, but I don't think that would mean that everyone playing loved to do pet battles.

I would think it would matter very much to them to make content that players both like and are willing to do. They however, measure success by getting people to do things and never ask if they had fun doing it because by that metric a great deal of their systems would be miserable failures.

[Granyala]

I would think it would matter very much to them to make content that players both like and are willing to do. They however, measure success by getting people to do things and never ask if they had fun doing it because by that metric a great deal of their systems would be miserable failures.

Doesn't work in an MMO, really, because they live of the repetitive grind, since content cannot be produced fast enough.
A dungeon or raid may be fun once or twice. After that, most people will only run it for rewards.

[Niwes]

Player engagement as measured by how much they play and for how long is as valid a metric as any after sales.

If you don't care for the repetition, gating and the RNG of the reward system, go play something else. Games are designed for specific audiences and this design seems to be working out for them based on their own words.

Arguably, more engagement = better game. Just because you don't care for it styil, doesn't mean it's not successful. You hate nearly everything in the game anyway as evidenced by your many threads so why torture yourself about it.

i cant fully agree to that. because imo exactly wow have NOT a specific audience. second thing is players thst playing this game since a while didnt sign a diablo contract. they signed a mmorpg contract.

someone that moderated this forum as long as you did (btw: why did you stop?) should know that difference.

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I didn't say that a reward system was bad. I'm saying that looking at what players do and concluding that everything is great because players did it for the reward isn't what they should be looking at.

Blizzard never, ever asks or seems to try to figure out whether players are doing something because they like it or because they are being paid to do it via the reward system. I have no doubt they could get 100% of players to do pet battles if they rewarded raid loot, but I don't think that would mean that everyone playing loved to do pet battles.

I would think it would matter very much to them to make content that players both like and are willing to do. They however, measure success by getting people to do things and never ask if they had fun doing it because by that metric a great deal of their systems would be miserable failures.

i fully agree to that. and to nearly everything you said in the last few posts.

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And yet their actions did the exact opposite, and bled subs like crazy after Cata launched. I refuse to believe over 4 million people quit over the course of Cata and MoP just because the WC3 storyline was over, and then even more in WoD before the end of expansion content drought.

exactly the same thing i refuse too. i know a LOT of ppl ingame over the years. and MANY left. but not 1 ever mentioned that LK-is-dead thing as reason.

on the other side, after/mid wotlk the way the game was designed changed a lot in terms of the meta game, the target audience and the game systems. imo a way better reason for stop playing is "this is no longer mine" than "WC3 ends, bye".

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It's bullshit terminology that means nothing. Blizzard Dev's said (back in Cata) "we're fine with people running out of things to do and playing other games", or words to that effect. Blizzard don't have anything big to talk about concerning subs, that's it. I don't think subs have dive-bombed and everyone at Blizzard HQ are running around like headless chickens wondering what to do next, but if there was anything hugely positive to show concerning subs they'd be gloating like fuck about it.

i wouldnt be so drastic about. but whats a simple truth (could be checked by all past marketing posts of the last 10 years compared with numbers offered a while ago after that) is: when they have something good to say they pump it up to the glory. when they have something not so good they try to let sound it neutral. thats just typical standard in marketing. so i agree to that point.

[Schattenlied]

exactly the same thing i refuse too. i know a LOT of ppl ingame over the years. and MANY left. but not 1 ever mentioned that LK-is-dead thing as reason.

on the other side, after/mid wotlk the way the game was designed changed a lot in terms of the meta game, the target audience and the game systems. imo a way better reason for stop playing is "this is no longer mine" than "WC3 ends, bye".

Exactly my experience as well, hell, most of the people I know who quit never even played WC3, they didn't give a damn about the storyline, the gameplay changed into something they no longer liked.

[Terahertz]

Successful game? Yes. Necessarily quality game? No.

[MoanaLisa]

Successful game? Yes. Necessarily quality game? No.

Successful is subject to standard business metrics and at some level can be a very objective judgement.

Quality? Much less so as it's so much more subjective. Very few people, especially here, seem to be capable of stepping back and saying something like "I really loathe this game but it's obviously well-made, highly polished and obviously of high quality."

[Sencha]

I agree that creating pointless time-consuming "content" like world quests is a very bad design.