Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[rda]

So, no evidence then? Just assumptions that support your narrative?

You are being unreasonable and are getting agitated uselessly. I am expressing my opinion. If you have a different opinion, that's fine. I am not sure what it is, frankly, and why do you think it is the right one, because all you are doing is saying that I am wrong (basically because I don't have a paper with signatures of all Blizzard employees stating the same as myself and you require that), but whatever.

[Ningjinq]

So, no evidence then? Just assumptions that support your narrative?



The prowler wasn't easy to get?

The fox mount? No, it's gated by rng too. I have no idea how many nightfallen caches combined on my characters I've turned in but I've not seen it. Easily more than 50. (I'm I'm on the super unlucky end, but just pointing out that even that is an rng drop chance).

- - - Updated - - -

I don't have a firm opinion on if the drop rate on the mounts on the rares on Argus is high enough or not, but it seems to be relatively fair chance to at least get one so I'm relatively ok with that. I see plenty running around compared to pre-class mount mounts

[Hitei]

You are being unreasonable and are getting agitated uselessly. I am expressing my opinion. If you have a different opinion, that's fine. I am not sure what it is, frankly, and why do you think it is the right one, because all you are doing is saying that I am wrong (basically because I don't have a paper with signatures of all Blizzard employees stating the same as myself and you require that), but whatever.

I'm not agitated at all. I just think if you're going to claim RNG is losing subs, you should provide (any) evidence at all for that claim.My claim is that people in general enjoy RNG and gambling, even when the odds are fairly set against them. My evidence for that claim is that gambling has been a staple form of human entertainment, across societies and civilizations, for thousands of years. It remains one of the most common recreation activities around, whether it takes the form of loot crates in video games, spending a weekend in vegas, betting on unknown horses in horse racing, playing the lotto, or joining in on a raffle at a fair.

People like that excitement of rolling the dice. And since, I assume, the population of World of Warcraft isn't some bizarre separate existence from the rest of human society wherein people have completely different opinions unlike those found in the rest of the world--I'm going to go ahead and guess that people who play WoW also like rolling those dice.

A vocal minority on the forums might not, but people in general probably do.

But sort of neither here nor there isn't it? Since even if this were a valid claim backed up by evidence it wouldn't somehow make subjective qualities like whether you like or don't like something, objective. Even if every single player in the entire game hated flying, the one person who says "I like flying" isn't wrong. She likes flying. The only way this is somehow "wrong" is if she has multiple personality disorder and her main personality doesn't like flying, or some equally convoluted nonsense wherein people don't like what they like.

The fox mount? No, it's gated by rng too. I have no idea how many nightfallen caches combined on my characters I've turned in but I've not seen it. Easily more than 50. (I'm I'm on the super unlucky end, but just pointing out that even that is an rng drop chance).

Perhaps I've just gotten lucky. I saw the mission pop up multiple times across characters, and it seems like, even early on, a ton of people were riding it.

[rda]

I just think if you're going to claim RNG is losing subs, you should provide (any) evidence at all for that claim.My claim is that people in general enjoy RNG and gambling, even when the odds are fairly set against them. My evidence for that claim is that gambling has been a staple form of human entertainment, across societies and civilizations, for thousands of years. It remains one of the most common recreation activities around, whether it takes the form of loot crates in video games, spending a weekend in vegas, betting on unknown horses in horse racing, playing the lotto, or joining in on a raffle at a fair.

The word you are looking for is "reasoning", not "evidence".

My reasoning is that this game was not about RNG, it was about building a character and engaging in roleplay. The central elements are the story, the activities and the things that a character has. RNG is not what people came for, it is fine in small doses, but not when it becomes a dominant theme. People who like RNG and rolling dices perform activities that are much more rewarding in that way - poker, slots and whatnot. These activities don't bother them with leveling and they don't contain extra fluff which detracts from the "push button -> get random reward -> inflow of dopamine" cycle. Yeah, RNG "works" in a sense on people, to an extent it works on everyone, but it is a bad fit for an MMO and it is certainly not a substitute for interesting content. Blizzard are discovering that now.

- - - Updated - - -

PS: If you really want to argue the line "some / many people like RNG so it's good that Blizzard are having so much of it in WoW, that's just mainstream", switch "RNG" for "HD porn".

[killwithpwr]

I don't understand why you guys are hung on the mount RNG... I love mounts and i hate RNG, but theres absolutely no problem with the amount of RNG needed for collecting more mounts.
So i didnt get my Valarjar Dragon and Dream Unicorn. I'll just have to get luckier...

The problem with RNG in legion is based at gearing.
Having the potential to get world quest loot that will surpass my Mythic gear (which i dont have much of since HC and NM gave me much better gear than what i had the luck to drop in Mythic) is just plain and simple wrong.

[Hitei]

The word you are looking for is "reasoning", not "evidence".

My reasoning is that this game was not about RNG, it was about building a character and engaging in roleplay. The central elements are the story, the activities and the things that a character has. RNG is not what people came for, it is fine in small doses, but not when it becomes a dominant theme. People who like RNG and rolling dices perform activities that are much more rewarding in that way - poker, slots and whatnot. These activities don't bother them with leveling and they don't contain extra fluff which detracts from the "push button -> get random reward -> inflow of dopamine" cycle. Yeah, RNG "works" in a sense on people, to an extent it works on everyone, but it is a bad fit for an MMO and it is certainly not a substitute for interesting content. Blizzard are discovering that now.

Really? Because I seem to remember it largely being about very slowly gearing up with fairly low drop rates and hoping you got the gear you needed because everything was tuned awkwardly. Is that what you meant by building a character?

I think it's a perfectly fine fit for an MMO, especially since the genre--and even beyond that, the genres it pulls from, like pen and paper RPGs, are highly steeped in RNG. In fact, the entire game is built from the ground up on RNG. That is why there are dodges and parries, why they are crits, why weapon damage is a range, profession skill-ups are a chance, fishing exists, and the default system for deciding who gets loot is a random number roll.

And really, RNG hasn't gone up all that much, it's just changed form. Combat Vanilla/BC was far more RNG, between variable spell ranges, miss chances, and (because of number tuning) far more dangerous crits or potentially devastating dodges or resists. The RNG was just moved away from being able to make one mob a joke and the next mob life threatening, to being a system for getting random upgrades and better loot from rewards.

Which illustrates the real problem at hand. Not RNG, but the min-maxing trend that has been every increasingly present with each year the game has gone through. The reality of the situation is that gearing is pretty much the exact same that it has been for years. You have loot tables, the loot tables have fixed drop chances and the game rolls and loot drops, you get upgrades, and you move on to the next thing that is an upgrade. Except that there's the potential now for that loot that dropped to be even more of an upgrade than you expected.

That is a good thing. Except some people, who get angry easily or feel like the deserve the best possible thing right away nearly guaranteed, instead see the situation as "I didn't get a massive upgrade, just the one I was originally trying for, so now I'm somehow weaker!" Which is just absurd. You got a free cupcake and now you're whining about how other people's free cupcakes have more sprinkles.

"This game wasn't about RNG" because people used to care a lot less about the RNG that was there. They got loot and they were happy, or they didn't get loot and they were disappointed--rather than now, where they get loot and are still disappointed because it isn't also +20 TF or their absolute BiS Legendary. So now the RNG is a problem, even though it is actually more in your favor right now than it has literally ever been. Because the extra element is all icing on the cake.

So, no. I think it's fine the way it is right now, not because it's mainstream, but because it is a core part of RPGs that I, and many others, genuinely enjoy. And I don't see the point in altering it in for the sake of (my assumption) a vocal minority that (observed behavior) tends to also be the same group that will just find something else to whine about.

[rda]

"This game wasn't about RNG" because people used to care a lot less about the RNG that was there. They got loot and they were happy, or they didn't get loot and they were disappointed--rather than now, where they get loot and are still disappointed because it isn't also +20 TF or their absolute BiS Legendary. So now the RNG is a problem, even though it is actually more in your favor right now than it has literally ever been. Because the extra element is all icing on the cake.

People used to care a lot less about RNG because it wasn't dominating everything like it does now.

How it was before, say in WotLK:

You level to 80 and you start preparing for heroics. You are at 1100 DPS and you want to be at 1500 or so not to be a drag on others. Cool, you check what's available to you and you see that with some work you can get a couple of blue rep pieces. You do those reps, buy those rep pieces and get a couple of drops from normals. Fine, you are ready for heroics now. Now you want to prepare for raids, you want to push your DPS further. You pull the drop tables and see that you need to get the weapon from Oculus, bracers from Stratholme, and three-four other assorted pieces from other heroics. You will also get shoulders from Wintergrasp, buy a crafted belt, get a purple piece from one of the reps, and that together should do it. Cool, you do Wintergrasp / Oculus / Stratholme / other heroics / your rep, and you gradually get your drops. If you are super-unlucky and aren't getting a couple of drops from heroics and they are for some reason critical (because, say, you are a tank and you have to be uncrittable, yet you aren't yet), fine, you will accumulate enough coins to buy a badge piece to fill the missing slot. Then you do your first raid, then you start preparing for the second raid, etc, etc, then you pull an alt, etc, and all the way you plan your work and then you work your plan and RNG is there but just in the background, with ways around it if you get very unlucky.

Now: do world quests - any world quests would do, pray for RNG. Also do instances - any would do, pray for RNG. After you are done, do more instances on mythic and +1 and +2, etc - any instance would do, pray for RNG. Then do raids - again, doesn't matter much which ones, pray for RNG.

There is a huge difference.

Saying "we had RNG before so I am not seeing issues" is completely myopic, the role and scale of RNG were vastly different. In prior days you could aim and RNG was kinda there, but not overbearing. Now you cannot aim, RNG is plain dominating everything.

[rda]

Now I just pray. I pray in every facet of the game. Everything you do requires a prayer to some RNG god.

It really looks a lot like D3 now, just with a different setting. The incentives are exactly the same - do whatever you have been doing for months now and maybe you will get a good item. (Often you will get an item that is good, but not good enough to be an upgrade, and will curse the system to no end, and there are other kinds of stupidities, so if you have been playing and experiencing them in D3 you will feel right at home.) It is completely boring and the appeal of huge rewards if you get lucky evaporates very quickly.

D3 is a desert. WoW is going the same way.

[Mekkle]

Can we try to get back on topic? this a speculation thread, not a "I like/hate this buisiness model" thread.

[Scourge12309]

[QUOTE=scarecrowz;47412606]144? I'd be happy to see 60 lol.

I feel like I have to turn the game down to 6 or 7 at 1440p to see close to 60FPS STABLE. It's honestly been the worst expansion for optimization.
distance above 7 is a nono, took me quite a bit of tweaking to get those results

[Polybius]

It really looks a lot like D3 now, just with a different setting. The incentives are exactly the same - do whatever you have been doing for months now and maybe you will get a good item. (Often you will get an item that is good, but not good enough to be an upgrade, and will curse the system to no end, and there are other kinds of stupidities, so if you have been playing and experiencing them in D3 you will feel right at home.) It is completely boring and the appeal of huge rewards if you get lucky evaporates very quickly.

D3 is a desert. WoW is going the same way.

WoW has been like that for years. The only systems it borrowed from D3 are the talents, paragon, and rifts.

The issue with RNG is really the constant addition of 'tiers' such as warforged and titanforged.

Edit: Basically what Scarecrowz said.

[Polybius]

He means the repetitive uninspired and lazy content that people keep continuously running because of Legendaries, warforging and moronic things like paragon RNG chests.

Hilariously one of Legions shining features is Mythic+. While you could argue its good... It's just another difficulty of the same shit.

What was Argus besides its great story quests?

A shit dungeon that re-uses the outdoor zone and the same shit we had in The Broken Shore with new paint. WQs, Rares, Chests, Sentinax, World Bosses.

In other words, a video game with an endgame that relies on replay value. Which has been a thing every expansion for the past ten years.

It's only a matter of time before they run out of breathing room from pushing out content. And I'm not going to expect any more for WoW considering it runs on a limited engine. I for one am enjoying a different game, there's just no way they can push anything new and inspiring. I mean, from a game design standpoint, what alternative would you suggest?

[Deleted]

Have we been literally crying about RNG in an MMO for the past 5 pages?

[Ghargatuloth]

I'm not a game designer. Obviously. But anything has to be better than this.

I have been un-subbed for a while. I am aware it needs replay value but they have removed pretty much any sense of progression from the game. Any sense of control. That's without discussing the quality of the content. Nothing added in the patch cycles of Legion has been anything "WOW". It's all just... More of the same with more slot machines.

WoW is on a downward spiral - which is inevitable. But is this really the right way to pretend the game is still thriving? Load everything up with RNG... Report on "time played" instead of sub numbers?

I'm really hoping 8.0 changes the direction away from this. Because it can't continue.

You some kind of politician? You basically just said "I have no answer for you" followed by a repetition of what you've been chanting for your last ten or so posts.

Can we move on from this topic? By this point it's like beating a dead horse. Not to mention whatever is coming in 8.0 is likely to not deviate terribly far from what they have planned at this stage in development.

Edit - You even have a separate thread dedicated to moaning about this issue! What the heck!? (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...admit-mistakes)

[Deleted]

You should all be praying 8.0 is a return to form. Literally praying.

goodbye to you then

Its an illusion. As you go on to mention later about one of 3 mounts. The rate isn't improved the amount of chances you have per box to get
an item are improved. Instead of 1 chance of 1% Its 3 chances of 1%.

Someone doesnt understand math....

[In Ogres We Trust]

I'm not a game designer. Obviously. But anything has to be better than this.

I have been un-subbed for a while. I am aware it needs replay value but they have removed pretty much any sense of progression from the game. Any sense of control. That's without discussing the quality of the content. Nothing added in the patch cycles of Legion has been anything "WOW". It's all just... More of the same with more slot machines.

WoW is on a downward spiral - which is inevitable. But is this really the right way to pretend the game is still thriving? Load everything up with RNG... Report on "time played" instead of sub numbers?

I'm really hoping 8.0 changes the direction away from this. Because it can't continue.

You can have have a) quality content with linear progression or b) "access" for everyone.

[Deleted]

They are leaving big time. Legion is likely going to lose at least a third of the players during its course, quite possibly more. The end.

oh look rda now works for blizzard and nows the player numbers....

[Paula Deen]

Someone doesnt understand math....

Yeah. I do.

[rda]

I am going to be short and just specify my position because all the things in the replies were talked about before. I can elaborate but will only do this on demand.

WoW has been like that for years. The only systems it borrowed from D3 are the talents, paragon, and rifts.

No. WoW was not like that for years. Your "the only" is incomplete (also borrowed world quests, legendaries in how they drop, etc) and it is an oxymoron, this "the only" is huge.

In other words, a video game with an endgame that relies on replay value. Which has been a thing every expansion for the past ten years.

No. WoW did not have RNG dominating everything like that for the past ten years.

You are being way too simplistic. According to you, if WoW had some elements of RNG at some time and it was reasonably successful then, then bam, done, it suddenly can have tons of RNG and it's all going to be alright because "it has always been like that muhaha". This is so primitive. It's not useful to reduce arguments to this level, you stop making sense. Pictures of siths come to mind.

You can have have a) quality content with linear progression or b) "access" for everyone.

No. You can have both a) and b). b) is done by plugging into the middle. The progression doesn't have to be linear either.

[Soulwind]

Yeah. I do.

If I understand correctly (I haven't read the whole conversation), he's slightly more right than you:

You throw one die, you've got a 1/6 chance of getting a 6.

You throw three dice, you've got three individual 1/6 chances of getting a 6, but your odds of getting a 6 in any die have increased.

That means you do have a 3% chance of getting a mount out of the box, but you only have a 1% chance of getting each of them specifically.

Of course, that's assuming there isn't anything preventing you from getting all three from the same box, or getting duplicates, otherwise the real odds are dependant on how that algorithm works.

So the boxes do have a higher chance of rewarding a mount, as long as you don't care which one you get.