Braindance: Small essay on why making the game easier is wrong

[Itisamuh]

So according to him (and others) the game is worse and people are leaving because more people are able to do what they want?

- computing logic -

- system error -

- logic does not exist -

[Deleted]

Tasks that require more effort ARE, by textbook definition, more difficult.

So would separating the sausages out of 10,000 tins of beans and sausages be difficult? If you say yes then I can only assume you're remedial or missing your thumbs.

Time spent does not equate to difficulty.

What about someone who works in mc donalds 8 hours day? Time consuming yes. Difficult? Not so much

[Ronduwil]

The decline started with the advent of wrath that made the game more socialist and open to anyone, and from there it was downhill.

How can a virtual world be socialist when it has infinite resources? The answer is that it can't, and that's why your statement is so ridiculous. WoW is a game. It's not a credit card with a rewards program to entice people to spend more. It's not a factory that is rewards workers for being more productive. It's a game run by a company that makes money by having lots of players, regardless of whether those players are skilled or unskilled. The game seemed to be alive and well to me all throughout wrath. There was never a shortage of groups or raids until Cataclysm hit. I went through around 3 or 4 guilds in the span of two months simply because every guild I joined fell apart shortly thereafter due to lack of interest. I went from exclusively doing in-guild dungeon runs and occasional raids to exclusively pugging because no one would do dungeons any more and every attempt to raid fell apart before Halfus was even to 50%. After 3 months of pugging troll heroics I joined in on a raiding guild's Heroic ICC achievement run and discovered that I was actually better than many of their players. That's how I got sucked into raiding. The next couple of years were more trouble than they were worth:

• 12 hours of raiding a week, 4 of them spent looking to fill missing slots.
• Constantly walking the non-stop gear treadmill only to have it start right back up just as I thought it was nearing its end.
• Drama and more drama from tanks: I and/or my buddy didn't get the loot we wanted. I won't stay up so late. I can't show up that early. I'm tired of wiping.

I finally came to the conclusion that I don't like raiding and don't want to do it. That was about the time that Blizzard decided that the WoW endgame was going to be all raids all the time. I know they also added Pokemon to the game, but I already get that without having to pay $15 a month for it. The fact that there's nothing for me to do aside from raiding is what drove me away from the game. The game's ease had nothing to do with it. In fact the game's difficulty is what drove all my friends away from it to begin with.

[The Kao]

So according to him (and others) the game is worse and people are leaving because more people are able to do what they want?

Actually, more people get to see more of the content quicker than ever before, thanks to all the "accessibility" features that were sneaked into the game over time. For a big part of the player population this results in a lack of motivation to do anything more than the bare minimum, which today is sufficient to see everything the game has to offer in a way. Going into the "real" game would mean to interact with others, actually show effort and invest time, which they can't be bothered with. Thus they leave again since there is literally nothing left to do, from their point of view.

[Deleted]

All that post told me?

People take this game far, far too seriously.

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The most amusing thing about this though? The "mass-exodus" of players started happening looooong after people started complaining en masse that the game was too easy.

One nerf to a BC boss and it caused a tantrum on the forums.

[Detheavn]

How is more time not more effort? Doing dailies for 50 charms also takes much less time than finishing challenge modes.

While I agree with time = effort, it did not make a game difficult. Inaccessable, maybe. Tedious ... heall yeah.
That time could have been easily spent doing more fun things... Fishing for stonescale eels in Azshara for hours on end ... was ... not ... fun.

[Syran]

They never required more effort. They just took freakin forever. Rep grinds are an example, even of today's rep grinds: repeat the same set of quests again and again and again in a mind-numbing haze. That's not effort. Effort would be blowing all cooldowns and executing a perfect rotation to just kill that rare mob for a quest a second before you die, omg omg omg I did it!

That's effort. Doing dailies to get 50 charms is not effort, it's just time. Running challenge modes over and over, trying to get that last piece of cosmetic gear with your team, perfecting your teamwork and your execution bit by bit is effort.

Questing, for example, certainly required more effort, a precise execution in pulling at lots of points in the game, line of sight tactics, CC, kill orders, and so on. It didn't just take longer, it was inherently more difficult. As in you could rarely survive having more than 3 mobs on you without cooldowns (at lower levels at least), resource regeneration was a LOT slower (rage for example), world elites at your level could easily 3 shot you.

That's difficulty, that's not the game being tedious.

[Jessicka]

Questing, for example, certainly required more effort, a precise execution in pulling at lots of points in the game, line of sight tactics, CC, kill orders, and so on. It didn't just take longer, it was inherently more difficult. As in you could rarely survive having more than 3 mobs on you without cooldowns, resource regeneration was a LOT slower (rage for example), world elites at your level could easily 3 shot you.

That's difficulty, that's not the game being tedious.

That's the view of a player who enjoys combat mechanics. Not the player who enjoys Archaeology. The latter might well find getting roflstomped by overpulling too many mobs when trying to get to a fragment tedious, but wouldn't regard getting the scarab mount or whatever tedious by any stretch.

Different folks play for different reasons. Not everyone is a Heroic Raiding combat monster.

[Syran]

That's the view of a player who enjoys combat mechanics. Not the player who enjoys Archaeology. The latter might well find getting roflstomped by overpulling too many mobs when trying to get to a fragment tedious, but wouldn't regard getting the scarab mount or whatever tedious by any stretch.

Different folks play for different reasons. Not everyone is a Heroic Raiding combat monster.

The combat mechanics are the core of this game, after all, the vast majority of the game's content is built around it, from questing to Heroic raiding. Only with the last two expansions are we seeing some content which has no true basis on traditional mechanics.

So I think it's safe to say that the majority of people engaged in this game would perceive the original questing more difficult if they had a chance of experiencing it in isolation from other sources. I'm not going after every niche group in this game.

Also why the heroic raider comment? You don't have to raid heroics in order to see the difference between leveling do you?

[Mad_Murdock]

Misguided observations of the WoW community, chapter 1:

1) "The game was never difficult, just tedious". Tasks that require more effort ARE, by textbook definition, more difficult. If you don't believe me, feel free to look the word up yourself. Tasks that require more effort are also inherently more rewarding, because that is how humans are wired. .

You can cut the grass with a pair of scissors or use a lawn mower. Does using the pair of scissors really feel more rewarding ? You can walk to school up hill in the snow both ways or you can ride the bus. Does walking up hill feel more rewarding ?

You can write letters with pen and paper or send a text message (or use the phone and call them). Does writing the letter give you a sense of being superior to those dang text messaging kids ?

I've never done Navy Seal training, but my opinion it's pretty easy.

But to the OP. Who is braindance and why do we care what he has to say, which seems to be the same thing the other 1% hardcore players always say ?

I still haven't seen any proof yet, that the hardcore, who want everything hardcore is right. The new generation of kids are wrong of course, because I'm older then they are, so they are all just whiny self entitled brats. It's impossible that maybe, my way was never the right way and they look at silly grinds and go "Why would I do that in a video game?" and off they go to something else.

Maybe the hardcore are just starting to feel like chumps when after all these years, they found out that all that hoop jumping they did was for nothing. Turns out, no one cares about all the times you had to walk up hill in the snow, they got a bus and like it or not, it's better.

[Annarion]

I had hope for this post, but then I realized it's just a veiled attempt at insulting casuals and calling for all raids to be tuned to heroic.

[Killadrix]

Honestly, I think there are a myriad of reasons people have left the game and too many of the ones who remain do nothing but sit around and try to pin the exodus upon whatever their personal gripe is.

[ComputerNerd]

The small percentage of raiders fully clearing heroic modes of the current tier while they are still current says otherwise.
The difficulty is there, just arrogant players who are choosing to ignore the actual results will keep whining about content they know full well is not aimed at them.
If that is not your post, then why bother posting it at all ?
All it does it regurgitate the same tired rants from players who are upset that they aren't the sole target of the development efforts by blizzard.

[thelordpsy]

The decline started with the advent of wrath that made the game more socialist and open to anyone, and from there it was downhill.

If the decline started with Wrath, how do you explain the fact that WoW subscribership increased continuously throughout WOTLK?
How do you explain that the quickest drop in subscriber numbers happened during the biggest shift from easy to hard?

Could it be that you're making statements that are totally unsupported by data?

[Jessicka]

The combat mechanics are the core of this game, after all, the vast majority of the game's content is built around it, from questing to Heroic raiding. Only with the last two expansions are we seeing some content which has no true basis on traditional mechanics.

So I think it's safe to say that the majority of people engaged in this game would perceive the original questing more difficult if they had a chance of experiencing it in isolation from other sources. I'm not going after every niche group in this game.

Also why the heroic raider comment? You don't have to raid heroics in order to see the difference between leveling do you?

Questing content has never had much to do with rotations, I levelled in TBC mostly using a Wand until about level 50. At any point out in the world with some perseverence you could muddle through spamming your basic filler. Back then so much of the game was questing; you quested to unlock dungeons, open up trade specialisations and all sorts. You ground out world mobs for reputation with factions for recipes, suplementing where possible with dailies. So you've always been able to do a huge chunk of the game without any kind of intimate knowledge of rotations - they make it easier, but it's never been necessary. Out in the world like that with no one to badger you to do better or talk about rotations, you just got on with it; how to play was absolutely secondary to getting rep bars filled.

There are still players out there who still hold to that attitude; and that's fine because it's the grindy solo stuff they're interested in anyway. That's where the "I'll play how I want" attitude comes about; they have weird specs and rotations because it works for them in parts of the game that raiders aren't interested in. That's why I made the Heroic Raider comment.

[Joegrizly]

You chose to play the easy parts. Did you try out heroic scenarios when you weren't overgearing them? Heroic raids? Challenge modes and go for gold timers? Rare-hunting (solo)? There is challenge and difficulty to be found in MoP.

everything you just mentioned is in fact very easy.

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I remember when they made heroics harder in Cata, yeah that went SUPER well for them. MGV was the hardest opening raid we have had in awhile, Heroic Scenarios are a pain at lower gear levels, Challenge Modes, etc. Raids are overall harder than they have ever been. Leveling was also not even that easy at times (depends on your class though).

MoP is not an easy expansion. Not saying it is the hardest ever, but saying it is easy and that is why it is failing is just a wrong point.

Yeah its offical im quitting wow on the 25th after reading this guy

[Deleted]

This game is so dogshit now who cares about theorycrafting about why its bad, it just is and has been since Wrath. Deal with it.

Its too late to change, Blizzard already picked their path.

[Normie]

Honestly, I think there are a myriad of reasons people have left the game and too many of the ones who remain do nothing but sit around and try to pin the exodus upon whatever their personal gripe is.

I wouldn't pretend to have any concrete knowledge of why people leave the game. I have some strong suspicions, though, like, after you play a game for a while, it becomes boring. The natural thing for people to do is play for a while and leave, as far as most games go.

Some people do encounter games that they continue to play for years or decades. Some people play chess, checkers, et cetera. I will probably always enjoy going on a Nethack binge every so often. But the normal thing is to find a game entertaining, then later, look for something else. And I think that is by far the reason that most people who have been engaged with the game ultimately give it up. (And then maybe come back later.)

Perhaps Blizzard may have seen that "lack of casual engagement" was a reason that people were leaving the game -- that they joined, played a little while, and found it didn't have enjoyable things to offer them. But the devil is in the details of that. I really don't know what "casual engagement" means. If you weren't raiding, you had nothing to do? Getting started in the game was too tedious? Or maybe there wasn't enough solo content? Or maybe the solo content was too grindy? Or who knows. Blizzard knows, but all I expect Blizzard to do with that knowledge is to make the game more appealing to more players. I don't expect anyone from Blizzard to regularly explain design strategy to me, or share proprietary data, et cetera.

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everything you just mentioned is in fact very easy.

Could you link your HM raid achieves and your challenge mode golds? Or did you get started, and it was so easy, it wasn't even worth doing?

[Molyneux]

The decline started with the advent of wrath that made the game more socialist

Stopped reading here. What a joke.

[Deficineiron]

The combat mechanics are the core of this game, after all, the vast majority of the game's content is built around it, from questing to Heroic raiding. Only with the last two expansions are we seeing some content which has no true basis on traditional mechanics.

So I think it's safe to say that the majority of people engaged in this game would perceive the original questing more difficult if they had a chance of experiencing it in isolation from other sources. I'm not going after every niche group in this game.

Also why the heroic raider comment? You don't have to raid heroics in order to see the difference between leveling do you?

my general view is folks who never played it should find a reputable 1.12 place to play, and level via outdoor questing (dont think dungeons scripted right anywhere). it is in many ways a totally different game. you pull 2 mobs, you die. the trogg runs away and gets another, you die. didn't see that maurading zone elite? you die (hello un goro, burning steppes, Mor'Ladim, ) your weapon 10 levels old? normal mob kills you before you kill it.

it is in many ways a totally different game from today's McMMO.