Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[Jessicka]

Mmhmm. That's why you don't extend your first raid lock out until the final boss is dead and instead re-kill the same bosses ad nauseam. Because you don't care about gear. Right.

The gear makes it easier; who said anything about keeping it hard for yourself?

Also, please note the context of my comment and the material quoted. By Blizzard's own admission, when you give people an opportunity to circumvent raiding the majority do (circumvent raiding). I dunno about you, but I'm not in the habit of circumventing things I find fun. Ergo, the logical conclusion to draw is that the majority of the player base do not raid for fun, the logical conclusion to draw then must be that they raid for loot; those really are the only two options (except masochism, but I refuse to believe the majority of players are masochists: see lack of tanks. =P).

Oh, yeah I get that; I said earlier in this or other threads that that was the problem with the 'early roadblocks' of Elegon, Garalon and Horridon; they effectively invalidated raiding as a gearing path and pushed people down the alternate routes of dailies/rep grinds and Valor. But that ties in to the above - they did that, to get gear so they could go back and kill those bosses.

That clearly hurt the repeatability of those bosses though, since players were already outgearing what they dropped in respect to getting ready for the next tier.

[Robert3620]

I wonder if Blizzard has thought about player created content at all. I have been playing STO and it has player created content. It's added a lot to the game and added a lot more content for everyone to do. One of the problems with this expansion is that if you did take away lfr, there would be very little content for a majority of the player base, player created content could help with that issue.

[Glorious Leader]

Mmhmm. That's why you don't extend your first raid lock out until the final boss is dead and instead re-kill the same bosses ad nauseam. Because you don't care about gear. Right.

Also, please note the context of my comment and the material quoted. By Blizzard's own admission, when you give people an opportunity to circumvent raiding the majority do (circumvent raiding). I dunno about you, but I'm not in the habit of circumventing things I find fun. Ergo, the logical conclusion to draw is that the majority of the player base do not raid for fun, the logical conclusion to draw then must be that they raid for loot; those really are the only two options (except masochism, but I refuse to believe the majority of players are masochists: see lack of tanks. =P).

Yep. They run from it screaming and kicking but the response shouldn't be to shove them down that rabbit hole or put the big carrots behind it so they are effectively shoved behind it. The answer is the answer to the question why isn't raiding fun anymore? was it ever fun? Will it ever be fun?

---------- Post added 2013-06-29 at 03:00 AM ----------

That clearly hurt the repeatability of those bosses though, since players were already outgearing what they dropped in respect to getting ready for the next tier.

But see once again this is the developer mind set. Those are raiders and outside of lfr they are a huge minority. The change to valor from cataclysm, when the developers insisted that raiders were raiding around patches and not bosses (i.e through valor acquisition and spending), harmed far more NON raiders. It demolished their rewarding play style. For the developers this was okay because in mists they had planned to shove everybody into raiding anyway. It's TERRIBLE.

[Floopa]

Raiding is already easy though. It can't be made easier. All raiding requires is how to play your class (for heroic: moderately well, for normal: below average) and knowledge of when to move (bad stuff = move, stacking up for heals). I'm literally at a miss how ToT could be made easier. Except Durumu there are no 1 shots. Except Horridon there is very little, if any, requirement to interrupt. Explain how it could be made easier without losing the justification for its item level.

[Angella]

People raid to get gear and be able to get in other people's faces and say 'ha ha I have better gear than you.' The fun isn't coming from getting the gear per say. It's about being better than other people and the 'better' in an MMO is gear. Hence why if raiding can be circumvented, it is circumvented.

[isadorr]

Fact is, if you can't keep players, they quit. And fact is, casual players are a majority. And fact is, if hardcore players quit, no one will mourn them. Hundreds of thousand of casual players, on the other hand...

If the casual players are so important why don't they put casuals on stage at Blizzcon? Why doesn't blizzard nerf normal content even more so the droolers can figure out normal mode faceroll style?

Does anyone not see that Blizzard is saying Normal isn't hard and we aren't nerfing things which is why they put Flex just above LFR in ilvl, basically say 'Here bad's here is puggable LFR, 8 whole item levels above faceroll while Normal mode is 553 17 ilvls above Flex raiding. You think that is blizzard caring about casuals with Flex because i just see a glorified LFR barely above regular LFR, further showing that Blizzard doesn't cater to casuals.

Whether or not thousands of casuals quit in the 1.8m sub drop, they are still following the same formula into 5.4

---------- Post added 2013-06-29 at 03:20 AM ----------

It's funny how the crowd that gets exclusive content wants to take it further. How would you all like it if the lfr crowd, you know the majority, demanded the removal of heroic? LFR does not give achievements, titles, and mounts. Now you want more not to be given out. There's a simple solution to all this: If you hate lfr then do not do it.

LFR gave the hardcore crowd everything it wanted. You asked for achievements to be given for beating current content, you got it. You wanted harder raids, you got them. You asked for content to be nerfed far less, you got it. You asked for extra content, you got it. Raiding normal or heroic mode is more exclusive at this point then it's ever been.

I agree with most of your post as Blizzard does want their game to be challenging so it attracts people who like a challenge. In 5.4 it is even more evident with Flex only having 536 gear and LFR having 528 gear, not much of a difference but like you said, like LFR, it will give the illusion of raiding without the challenge. The problem is that if it is as easy as the Ilvl would seem people are going to be upset because if they want to try normal modes then the jump from 536 to 553 ilvl is going to be big.

[Angella]

WoW subscription numbers reflect global gaming numbers in that total mmo subs is going down in favor of mobile platform games. It's a testament to WoW's strength that they reflect global numbers and not subscriber whims.

[melodramocracy]

Who are you to judge what is or isn't for people to spend their free time on? I don't care if I only get ONE hour of free time per week, if I choose to spend that single hour on a video game (wow specifically) do I not deserve to have fun? If anything I would say the person who only has a SINGLE hour of free time a week deserves to have more fun in that hour than the person who sits all week at his computer on WoW, given that he is working his/her ass off all week minus that single hour.

Sure, you deserve to have fun. And if you have 1 hour of free time per week, you're leveraging your free time very poorly by playing an MMO. Especially a sub based one.

---------- Post added 2013-06-28 at 11:46 PM ----------

It's funny how the crowd that gets exclusive content wants to take it further.

It's funny how the whole 'exclusive' angle has been debunked, yet folks still insist on pretending that it's an issue.

[Glorious Leader]

Sure, you deserve to have fun. And if you have 1 hour of free time per week, you're leveraging your free time very poorly by playing an MMO. Especially a sub based one.[COLOR="red"]

You ought to apply for a job at blizzard and put that on the front box. Or better yet if the developers share this mentality they ought to express it. My suspicion is they wouldn't last a minute if they did.

[melodramocracy]

You ought to apply for a job at blizzard and put that on the front box. Or better yet if the developers share this mentality they ought to express it. My suspicion is they wouldn't last a minute if they did.

It should be on the box of every MMO on the market, because it's a glaringly obvious reality of the genre, and common sense of the most basic level.

[Glorious Leader]

It should be on the box of every MMO on the market, because it's a glaringly obvious reality of the genre, and common sense of the most basic level.

Common sense (and quite especially this application of the phrase in this circumstance) is perhaps the most uncommon and most nonsensical thing one can or should expect. While this may be knowledge you are born with I can assure you that is not likely the case for most people who see the dragon on the box and think right the fuck on awesome.

[melodramocracy]

Common sense (and quite especially this application of the phrase in this circumstance) is perhaps the most uncommon and most nonsensical thing one can or should expect. While this may be knowledge you are born with I can assure you that is not likely the case for most people who see the dragon on the box and think right the fuck on awesome.

You aren't born with common sense, it's developed.

And we're now officially off the rails of the topic at hand.

[Glorious Leader]

You aren't born with common sense, it's developed.

And we're now officially off the rails of the topic at hand.

You'll forgive me "it" (common sense) is a nebulous concept and apparently in short supply. I had just assumed that one simple was born with it. Given that so few meet the criteria for having it and that criteria itself often changes with a whim...

[melodramocracy]

You're forgiven.

:P

But yeah. MMO's = time sinks. Every single one I've ever played. It's the nature of the beast, and players new to the genre are better served by moving on to something else if this is an issue for them. Whether someone has 'fun' during their limited time... well, that's entirely a personal matter. I'm sure some folks think it's fun simply flying around the landscape, others only see fun in raiding, and everything else is a waste of time. Either way, the time commitment is required. *shrug*

[DeadmanWalking]

If the casual players are so important why don't they put casuals on stage at Blizzcon? Why doesn't blizzard nerf normal content even more so the droolers can figure out normal mode faceroll style?

Does anyone not see that Blizzard is saying Normal isn't hard and we aren't nerfing things which is why they put Flex just above LFR in ilvl, basically say 'Here bad's here is puggable LFR, 8 whole item levels above faceroll while Normal mode is 553 17 ilvls above Flex raiding. You think that is blizzard caring about casuals with Flex because i just see a glorified LFR barely above regular LFR, further showing that Blizzard doesn't cater to casuals.

Whether or not thousands of casuals quit in the 1.8m sub drop, they are still following the same formula into 5.4

---------- Post added 2013-06-29 at 03:20 AM ----------



I agree with most of your post as Blizzard does want their game to be challenging so it attracts people who like a challenge. In 5.4 it is even more evident with Flex only having 536 gear and LFR having 528 gear, not much of a difference but like you said, like LFR, it will give the illusion of raiding without the challenge. The problem is that if it is as easy as the Ilvl would seem people are going to be upset because if they want to try normal modes then the jump from 536 to 553 ilvl is going to be big.

Are you suggesting that casuals are not important to wow? I don't think Blizzard is saying normal mode is not hard. In fact they have commented that Horridon was too much of a difficulty jump from the first boss to second. What they are saying is that they want different levels of difficulty for different players. By adding in more layers of difficulty they are saying that LFR caters to one group, Flex caters to another and normal/HR as well. They are being inclusive of all play styles, not exclusive like in your dreams.

You really need to stop trying to dodge the fact that you cant have a game without casuals. It won't happen. Blizzard is trying to make everyone happy, but what they won't do is seal off the content so you as an individual will be happy. Never going to happen.

And finally, challenge is different from person to person just like 'fun' is objective from person to person. I'm sure theres a challenge mode or PVP person who sneers down their nose at you just like you do at casuals, but ultimately nobody wants, "Was great at Warcraft" on their gravestone.

[Tomana]

If the casual players are so important why don't they put casuals on stage at Blizzcon?

How can you do that? Numerically speaking, it's impossible.
Also, Blizzcon does not just have WoW, they have other games too, which are much more skill-based (such as SC2) and putting good players on stage there makes much more sense.

Why doesn't blizzard nerf normal content even more so the droolers can figure out normal mode faceroll style?
[...]
Whether or not thousands of casuals quit in the 1.8m sub drop, they are still following the same formula into 5.4

Because they are making a huge mistake which is gonna backfire on them sooner or later (well, it already started, it will get worse).
As I already said, there is a conflict in Blizzard (and not just Blizzard) between the developers (broadly speaking) and the guys pursuing the finance interests. For the time being, the devs are winning. By itself, it ain't bad, because when they aren't you get EA, and I'm not sure it's better. But they push their philosophy a bit too far.

[Keoren]

Overall, the devs have consistently shown an attitude of "the best players must be catered to, regardless of the overall cost to the game". A finance guy didn't come up with that strategy.

This is a few days old post, but I must reply. Do you honestly believe that only the cheapest to create form of content should be included in the game?

An MMORPG is the sum of its pieces, the metagame included.

The revenue should also not be the concern of an average player. The financial decisions are made by the company. The players are there to tell what they think is fun.

[Osmeric]

This is a few days old post, but I must reply. Do you honestly believe that only the cheapest to create form of content should be included in the game?

No. And I didn't say that.

[Keoren]

No. And I didn't say that.

I was mostly exaggerating.

A finance guy wouldn't have tried this. A finance guy would have told the 1% to take a hike, and allowed the medio-cores to maintain their subscription-preserving illusions.

Where to draw the line? Ra-den that you used as an example is a single encounter that contributes/ed to the mystery and hype of the raid instance, among other things. It is very hard to measure the value of that in money. We don't even know how much it cost the company to create the encounter. What about the Brawler's Guild or other things that a small minority actually complete? Is it all pointless?

I truly think that the players should not focus on the financial side of things too much. The decisions are and will be out of their, your, and my reach. We do not have the numbers nor will the numbers that we can provide mean anything, really. It is the best to focus on the things we would and would not like to see as far as the game design goes. That is far more constructive as a discussion and feedback.

[Osmeric]

Ra-den that you used as an example is a single encounter that contributes/ed to the mystery and hype of the raid instance, among other things. It is very hard to measure the value of that in money.

Speaking for myself only, Ra-den constributes absolutely nothing to the game. From my personal perspective, they might as well have flushed that development money down the toilet.