Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[khalltusk]

I do understand this... its irrelvant.

We are not discussing what makes content exclusive... we are discussing whether exclusive game design is good or bad.



Im not, GL is.



I dont understand why ur discussing HOW content is or isnt exclusive... its a given that content pre-wrath was exclusive game dsign and post-wrath was non-exclusive game design. Everyone knows what made the content exclusive or not... its a pointless waste of posting.

Ur preaching to the converted, i know what made content exclusive and what made it accessible. The details (specifically gear) is irrelvant to whether it is good or bad overall game design to Wow.

Thats what the original post was about and also what Morello was talking about and thats what prompted this thread.

Is exclusivity good or bad for Wow?

If Blizzard had kept content exclusive would the subs be higher than they are now, as Morello said?

They're the points to discuss...

They are not irrelevant to the thread. Purely because it helps people make an opinion on what made the exclusive content good or bad. Like I said you only had one form of raiding before with no difficulty modifier. Now you have them but there are still issues then the question is why? None of the points I or others raised about gear or the way its made exclusive are irrelevant. It all adds to the discussion.

Your 2nd to last line is valid. Would the subs be higher than they are now? I doubt it. The reason being as we stated earlier in the thread that those design choices were road blocks to many players (thus we have to discuss about the games designs and mechanics you cannot avoid it otherwise the discussion only lasts 1 page and would not be talked about).

Gear being exclusive also adds to if it was a good or bad thing for wow. Remember dungeon gear in Vanilla, they eventually put in an upgrade route for this gear. For players who could not raid but wanted a way to progress their characters power. Thus its a valid discussion point. A good design choice was made to help non raiders aquire better gear as other gear was behind a large gate that was exclusive to raiders only. So it affected non raiders who wanted to get some sort of further progression but were unable to.

Imagine if they did not make some design choices and left raiding as 40man with attunements and everything was one difficulty but only tuned for the 1% like Nax/SWP were. Raiding would be a very exclusive thing and if the rest of the content was in the state it is in now: 5mans from MOP release and the scenarios player progression would be limited to only sub LFR gear if you did not do heroic raiding. I would make it a safe bet we would be nose diving sub wise more than it has.

[Deleted]

Purely because it helps people make an opinion on what made the exclusive content good or bad.

There is only one measurement of whether its good or bad.. and thats exactly what Morello said "Will Wow subs be higher with Exclusive contnent or not?".

It was a question of subs...

Im pretty sure everyone has an opinion on whether they enjoyed excluive content or not, but that isnt the point. The only point worth discussing is whether we think the game would have held onto its subs if Blizzard had kept to an exclusive game design model.

[Deleted]

You are wrong on too many levels. Character progression is directly tied with exclusivity in WoW. If you don't participate in exclusive content - your character's progress is heavily gimped. And character progress is increase of his combat capabilities, not some vanity stuff like battle pets, gold (yes it is useless and thus it is vanity), etc.

Difference in combat capabilities between those who participate in "exclusive content" and LFR is monstrous. And without LFR and it's pathetically small once-a-week chance to get crappy piece of gear, difference would be completely unbearable, and many people would quit outright because, honestly, WoW is not about pokemon...

Make character progression being an exclusive element, well, congratulations, you just tainted RPG principles. In a game with already tainted leveling system, this won't end good. At least preCata leveling was fun enough process to outweight "endgame" issues. But with Cata and onwards, leveling is faded out, and endgame difference between those who participate in exclusive content, and those who not, is bigger than ever before.

Character progression is a subject of heavy exclusion, and thus it is also a subject of this thread.

Make all LFR gear available through 5man heroics and replace LFR with flexiraid = everbody is happy again.

[khalltusk]

There is only one measurement of whether its good or bad.. and thats exactly what Morello said "Will Wow subs be higher with Exclusive contnent or not?".

It was a question of subs...

Im pretty sure everyone has an opinion on whether they enjoyed excluive content or not, but that isnt the point. The only point worth discussing is whether we think the game would have held onto its subs if Blizzard had kept to an exclusive game design model.

Yes we know what the question was about. But to use maths as an example, you have to show your working out of the answer. Simply saying 43205 does not cut it. Its worth showing how we came to that conclusion. We provide examples and debate what we thought contributed or provided a road block and would affect the players.

Also you are completely wrong on what this topic was about and I am quoting the original post here.


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I never really understood why some players consider exclusive content a negative thing for this game. Lets be frank about what exclusive means. This means content that required a certain dedication to the game, and time commitment. Being able to play well and organize with other players to accomplish legendary feats.

Skip all the talk about TBC and Vanilla being the "least accessible content blizzard created," lets talk about the here and now.

1) Having exclusive mounts and cosmetic items that disappear after the end of an expansion. Why is this bad? Should rewards not be tied to the context of the content they relate to? In other words, if cosmetic and vanity items are rewarded to players who do extremely difficult things like heroic raid bosses, or gladiator PvP, why shouldn't they be removed from the game when new expansions trivialize the content?

2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

And please, dont give me "the flair and excitement of a new game" or "the game was new back then" The game is new to anyone who picks it up for the first time even now days.

Last point:

The game is here for you (us) the players to have fun. Now if all you consider fun is "raiding" in whatever difficulty you "raid" in, then perhaps the game would lose your subscription. This is not however the case with World of Warcraft at all. In fact, even though more characters (not players) have seen "end game" content, it is still a minuscule number of people "raiding" compared to the population of WoW. I guess though since blizzard has trained players to think that all end game consists of is raiding, the problem lies in their own court. The real question you have to ask yourself.. what did end game consist of for all those players in Vanilla, TBC, and early WoTLK if only "1%" of them raided?

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So as you can see theres multiple points to discuss so anything I or anyone else here has raised is valid and contributes to the discussion.

[Robert3620]

The question of the topic is: Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people. It answers it's self, something that one is allowed to have and one is not will be viewed as bad to one side.

Here's a better question I think: If were going to have exclusive content, how about exclusive pricing to go with it? The raid content of this game costs more then all other content, so if people wish to see it be made exclusive then let them pay for it. If you wouldn't support a model that charges for exclusive content then why should you have it?

[Deleted]

The question of the topic is: Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people. It answers it's self, something that one is allowed to have and one is not will be viewed as bad to one side.

Here's a better question I think: If were going to have exclusive content, how about exclusive pricing to go with it? The raid content of this game costs more then all other content, so if people wish to see it be made exclusive then let them pay for it. If you wouldn't support a model that charges for exclusive content then why should you have it?

LFR is exclusive content too.

So everyone who enters a raidinstance should be charged for it.

[khalltusk]

LFR is exclusive content too.

So everyone who enters a raidinstance should be charged for it.

Can of worms!? :P

[Robert3620]

LFR is exclusive content too.

So everyone who enters a raidinstance should be charged for it.

I think that's not a bad idea at all. Blizzard should do it and charge based off recouping it's cost for making each mode. So if you were to divide it in three for total raid development and then charge based on per user of each mode. You would charge vastly less for lfr since so many do it, it would pay for it's self faster. How happy do you think those doing normal and heroic would be tho? The truth is lfr pays for the other modes, you would no way be able to make a case for making raid content with the few amount of people doing normal and heroic mode.

[Floopa]

FWIW SoO on normal mode is shaping up to be more difficult than ToT on normal mode. Have fun wiping to Fallen Protectors and then whining you aren't able to 1 shot the boss. Exclusivity should only exist when you have morons who truly believe they "deserve" to see all content because they pay a subscription fee. If you want to see all of the content, go do it. Don't ask for hand outs. WoW isn't a welfare system simulation game.

[khalltusk]

FWIW SoO on normal mode is shaping up to be more difficult than ToT on normal mode. Have fun wiping to Fallen Protectors and then whining you aren't able to 1 shot the boss. Exclusivity should only exist when you have morons who truly believe they "deserve" to see all content because they pay a subscription fee. If you want to see all of the content, go do it. Don't ask for hand outs. WoW isn't a welfare system simulation game.

Of course it isn't. Thats why there are difficulty levels. LFR / Flex / Normal / Heroic. So because these people pay the same amount blizzard has catered content for all of the players it can.

[Robert3620]

FWIW SoO on normal mode is shaping up to be more difficult than ToT on normal mode. Have fun wiping to Fallen Protectors and then whining you aren't able to 1 shot the boss. Exclusivity should only exist when you have morons who truly believe they "deserve" to see all content because they pay a subscription fee. If you want to see all of the content, go do it. Don't ask for hand outs. WoW isn't a welfare system simulation game.

No it is not but when people ask for lfr to be taken away they are wanting it to be a welfare system. LFR is what allows raid content to be created, Blizzard has said themselves that without it they would not be able to justify the costs of development for raid content takes. Asking Blizzard to remove lfr is asking for Blizzard to take away the content from those that fund the content to make a separate group feel better. Seems to me the wrong group of people are upset about "entitlement" and "welfare" here.

[Belisaurio]

Except the people who have already posted that they are fine with how LFR is and except the millions that play and enjoy the system as it is. You don't even get an unanimous opinion in the 2300 posts of this thread. And there are several millions out there playing.

2300 posts talking about LFR...so I don't know If all people raiding LFR (me included) are happy about that.

Blizzard has said themselves that without it they would not be able to justify the costs of development for raid content takes.

Raid is the end game, people hope and try to reach that objective (carrot in a stick /mode), this is the answer about raids. They (devs) put effort because there is nothing more than that. If people can't reach, that's good too, because they need to play more time (If you play 1 hour a day, and you need 500 hours to accomplish a Raid, then you will need a lot of time to reach that end). That's the point, because you know how many time can you play, but don't know how many hours do you need to finish that game.

But something has changed, people want more doing less (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing), but when they (gamers) consume the game that fast, and devs are doing the same effort for creating raids,it ends with people staring to cancel their subs. You can lose subs because the competency is stronger, you can lose subs because the pay model is old, but you can't never lose subs because you fail in design. Why? because the payment can be changed, graphics can be remodelled, but the design is really hard to change without cannibalizing the game (community vs community, 117 pages about that).

[Orange Joe]

NO ONE DOES DAILIES FOR FUN.

Wrong. Some people do do them for fun.

[melodramocracy]

The question of the topic is: Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people. It answers it's self, something that one is allowed to have and one is not will be viewed as bad to one side.

Here's a better question I think: If were going to have exclusive content, how about exclusive pricing to go with it? The raid content of this game costs more then all other content, so if people wish to see it be made exclusive then let them pay for it. If you wouldn't support a model that charges for exclusive content then why should you have it?

The good news is that none of the content being discussed in this thread is actually exclusive. It's available for anyone to conquer.

[Tomana]

Make all LFR gear available through 5man heroics and replace LFR with flexiraid = everbody is happy again.

Depending on the tuning of the said 5-man heroics, it would cause an even bigger QQ mega-tsunami about "casualZ getting handed EPIXXX" or a mass unsub.

[Belisaurio]

And it isn't even purely about LFR, it is about "exclusive content". And the angle on that, well...not even black and white but 50 shades of grey. Hell, we cannot even agree if content IS exclusive..after all, everybody can technically access even normal and hardmodes. But the moment you argue: Well...if there are normal and hard-modes and that is ok, why is easy and normal and hardmode NOT ok?

Well, I'm not arguing with normal and hard-mode Raids are OK.
My opinion about raiding is a bit different, I like one-mode of difficult, first bosses easy, mid bosses normal and Hardcore bosses in endgame. I don't like hard-modes at all, maybe for some achievements, mounts or titles.

But that, is just my opinion, so it's better to try to figure the flaws that more people are arguing here than my personal view of the game.

Let us see Blizzard remove tier tokens from LFR (there is a hint that it might happen) and see if we don't get a shitstorm topic with FAR over 2300 posts.

I agree with you. In Cata they tried something strange/risky with the difficult of dungeons. It's really hard to modify the system when you focused the path in one direction. With the new expansion, they can re-take more subs, then they've got the chance of creating a big flaw-design and see the un-subs again, or they can "normalize" the subs (really hard, cause competency with EQ, Wildstar, and all others).

[Osmeric]

FWIW SoO on normal mode is shaping up to be more difficult than ToT on normal mode. Have fun wiping to Fallen Protectors and then whining you aren't able to 1 shot the boss

I'm predicing sub losses in the trailing months of MoP are going to make Cataclysm look like the golden days of WoW.

[fangless]

Let us see Blizzard remove tier tokens from LFR (there is a hint that it might happen) and see if we don't get a shitstorm topic with FAR over 2300 posts.

You can't remove ANYTHING in this game without someone complaining. Poor example.

Again, players have no idea what they actually want/need. All they know is if you take loot away from them, it's a bad thing.

Honestly, discussions in forums like these are fruitless. No one is going to ever agree to disagree, or agree to view things from another position. I only hope the teams in the design rooms inside BlizzHQ realize where their game is going, and understand what direction they have in their heads.

As soon as the game focuses on only trying to make the quick buck, it's a lost cause.

[NeverStop]

Having tested 3 bosses on the PTR, I'm absolutely excited for SoO. Tons of interesting boss mechanics, just hope the tuning won't make them irrelevant. I'm perfectly fine with some exclusivity to Normal mode especially now with Flex being the casual yet still organized raiding format.

If Heroic Garrosh is on the level of H Rag pre-nerf, SoO won't disappoint.

[Deleted]

The good news is that none of the content being discussed in this thread is actually exclusive. It's available for anyone to conquer.

only in the same way that anyone can win gold in the olympic 100 metres.