We consume content too fast

**Crazyjoe** · 2012-07-20, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by Gouky

you are not suppose to play all the time.

and you are not that smart, if you think anyone can make you 6-8 month of non repetitive of gameplay.

I agree , in burning crusade you had to put the time in to clear the current content because the titles and some mounts would fall away when the new xpac arrived or was it before the 3.0 nerf, can't remember. However now we don't have to worry, i can go faceroll the madness title in 45 minutes at level 90 which a lot of players spents months and months wasting there lives getting.

IMO the game is much better for that now for the majority of players.

Deleted · 2012-07-20, 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by Crazyjoe

The thing blizzard realised that people won't just be playing there game anymore and made it so you can play for 2 hrs and week and clear the same content your current hardcore raiders do. It's a win / win for everyone

It's more like a lose/lose for everyone in my opinion. The content has become so simple that it can barely be classed as content. The casual has an experience of it not unlike just watching it on youtube or blitzing an old dungeon you have never done before. It's content so instantly accessible that it can pretty much be consumed in a single casual weekend and then the player is left waiting for more content to be released because reclearing it is infinitely less gratifying than doing it on proper difficulty with a guild. It's also a lose situation for hardcore players because the only progress they get is clearing the same stuff on harder difficulty, which is not new content. People have explained this to the blue poster in great detail in that 100-page thread.

Blizzard's (flawed) logic states that casual players will clear LFR, and if they have more time to kill they will join a guild and do normal, and if they become even more dedicated they will end up doing hardmodes. But in reality people stick to the level they prefer and the result is the content wears out faster than ever

**Crazyjoe** · 2012-07-20, 03:28 PM

Originally Posted by laserguns

It's more like a lose/lose for everyone in my opinion. The content has become so simple that it can barely be classed as content. The casual has an experience of it not unlike just watching it on youtube or blitzing an old dungeon you have never done before. It's content so instantly accessible that it can pretty much be consumed in a single casual weekend and then the player is left waiting for more content to be released because reclearing it is infinitely less gratifying than doing it on proper difficulty with a guild. It's also a lose situation for hardcore players because the only progress they get is clearing the same stuff on harder difficulty, which is not new content. People have explained this to the blue poster in great detail in that 100-page thread.

Blizzard's (flawed) logic states that casual players will clear LFR, and if they have more time to kill they will join a guild and do normal, and if they become even more dedicated they will end up doing hardmodes. But in reality people stick to the level they prefer and the result is the content wears out faster than ever

Aren't they bringing out the pet battle system though to solve time gap between raid resets, and people who clear content fast can put more work into levelling up there pets and that?

I think they talked about it on legendary a week ago that blizzard is trying to target a younger playerbase, so LFR will be for younger players and casuals to work towards finishing and the rest still have normal mode and heroic mode. At least when MoP starts there will be 13 raid bosses which I think will help a lot.

**Drithien** · 2012-07-20, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by Tomana

So basically, when someone (alt or not) levels up, he has to first run heroics to get gear for the first tier (which is not bad in itself) and then run LFR (let's say we have a player who is in a social guild) for weeks to get the gear of tier 1, then repeat for tier 2, etc... This would be stupid.

Stupid? This is the way the progression of characters in role-playing games has been working pretty much ever since role-playing games exist. When a player creates a new character he has to advance him step by step through the content of the game. This is basic role-playing game design.

Which for some weird reason does not seem to apply to the biggest mmorpg of them all... This is where all those "innovations'" and "quality of life" changes have brought the game. Up is down and down is sideways. Cause some people that don't even know how role-playing games work, complained about it, and Blizzard said so be it, to help work the numbers around. Meanwhile common sense and basic game design fly out of the window. One recent example being on the front page of this very site, in the excerpts from the thread on the official WoW forums where a Blizzard employee manages to enlighten us, and by enlighten I mean set our brain on fire, by not understanding the similarities between Skyrim and WoW. An open-world rpg, and an open world mmorpg according to him are "completely different".

If someone wants to create more than one character in WoW, or any rpg for that matter, then he has to start all-over again. That is how things are done. And for a very good reason. WoW is a role-playing game, not a moba, where you just log in, pick a character and go kill creeps. You create and shape your character. Reaching the level cap is not the only goal. Having a good time reaching there is. And once you are there to start shaping your character through the game's high-level content.

Of course for that to be done, there has to be some early and mid-level content worth playing through, which is another area where the game is bad. When the "new and improved" levelling experience of Cataclysm was released, content that took months to go through initially, took a few days now. Because offering less content to play through is a design goal apparently. And of course to top it all off, a lot of players got excited about it. They got excited that now they would have less of a game to play. Because the most joyous aspect of the game is the end-level grind for points... the one most of these players complain about, as the very same time....

The lack of knowledge, experience, and identity as a gamer of a lot of WoW players is quite evident from the above. They get less content, and they cheer, because that way they can get to the end of the game faster, to get bored faster, and then complain about it. Which is why Blizzard should really try to just make the damn game the way they did in vanilla. Just make the game and stop trying to please every single person, especially the ones that spout gibberish, not because they are bad people, or stupid, but just because they themselves have no idea what they enjoy from the game.

Tiered progression is a technique to get the player to experience the content. Just like a main campaign is. A sort of guiding hand to all the things that you can do in the game. And yes, at times that guiding hand grabs you and throws you into content, and shuts the door behind you. But it's for your own good. Because the content is there to be played through, not roflstomped through a few tiers later, if ever. And, it also increases the duration of the content. Job done. It worked for years. Not just vanilla and TBC. I mean years before WoW was even released. It is one of the basic concepts of game design. And not just videogame design, but game design in general. Taking it one step at a time.

Of course for that to work in WoW, things have to be different. Areas would have to be filled with quests once more. Instead of emptied like it happened with Cataclysm. I-am-lazy-please-chew-my-food-for-me tools like the quest tracker should be removed, and any similar add-on banned. Quests would have to have some depth in them, require players to think, pit them against challenges, actual challenges, that require knowledge, thinking and execution to be overcome. Obstacles should be raised, that will force players to learn how to play at least somewhat better than the current average. And low-level content in general should be filled with lots of interesting, in-depth, exciting content (racial campaigns, meaningful choices, small factions, exploration, etc). To keep players engaged through all those months it would take them to go through the content.

But of course that can't happen in WoW. Because as everybody knows in Blizzard's Wonderland, when your game becomes immensely financially succesful, you don't keep doing what you were doing good, you switch to senanigans, and common sense does not apply to you any longer, you can make a mmorpg play like a moba if you want to. Who will complain? Most of your players can't tell the difference between the two anyway, or just don't care anymore, they merely want their World of Facebook treat of the day.

**refire** · 2012-07-20, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by det

Funny. You called ICC "the old days". Gave me a good chuckle. To enlighten you further:
SSC: 7 bosses
TK: 5 bosses
SWP: 6 bosses

There always were smaller raids.

Just so you know, SSC had 6 bosses and TK had 4 bosses. Both of these tiers were also out on release day. The Black Temple was released before TK had even been cleared. They literally released content before the past content was dead.

If they want content to last longer they need to force people to do content. It's really that simple.

There should never be a five man awarding better loot than a raid. If they want to add new five man content they need to have it for lore and storyline purposes and it needs to drop something cosmetic such as a mount, pet, tabard, etc.

If they want content to last they need to force the progression of content. Personally I'm all for attunements, yet they really don't even need that. If a group of people wanted to succeed in Firelands, they should have had to do BoT, BWD, and Throne. If a group wanted to do Dragon Soul, they should have had to do BoT, BWD, Throne, and Firelands.

Being able to skip firelands and all of t11 because of 5 mans destroyed the game. Same goes for LFR or really LFR wasn't necessarily the problem. The problem was that you could get in LFR by doing 5 mans or that you could buy the PvP loot and cheat your ilvl high enough to get into LFR.

There are essentially two fixes they need to do in order to make content last. First, 5 man gear should never be greater than raid gear unless they do something like Sunwell (an unplanned raid only out for four months) and/or they should add attunements to force people to see content. Even if the attunement quest can be completed on the LFR version. Second, they need to tier battleground brackets. There shouldn't be ilvl 377 boe craftable PvP pieces. It lets you bypass everything. They also cannot expect people who just dinged 85 to compete with R1 geared people in random battlegrounds. They need to tier battlegrounds just like everything else. Have a hidden check for you need this ilvl. People below that ilvl go into a bg que and people above that ilvl go into a bg que. They play in separate ilvls. Not only does this ease the gear burden but in some cases it will also face not as skilled players with more not as skilled players. It allows for more of a learning curve while the PvP to get their gear to play in the higher ilvl battleground.

**Tomana** · 2012-07-20, 05:04 PM