MMO-Champion forums have a very warped view on difficulty.

[lazorexplosion]

If I said 'X is so easy I could ditch my mouse and keyboard and beat it with a rockband drum kit as a controller', you'd be forgiven if you thought I was talking about LFR. I'm actually talking about Dark Souls. Yes, the poster child for you can make a mainstream game difficult and people will love it is so easy - for elite players - that they have to do crazy stuff to be challenged by it.

I don't see Method breaking out the drum kits to try and wring a challenge out of WoW.

The elite difficulty of WoW is a serious contender for the most difficult content ever put in a mainstream game ever. The last armory sampling had 0.02% of the player base beating mythic blackhand. That shit is hard. If you say you want hard content, WoW has it.

Some food for thought:

Raid difficulty is inherently more punishing. If you have a 50% shot at not messing up the all mechanics of a Dark Souls boss so badly that you die before you get the kill, you'll breeze through Dark Souls. If you put together a raid 20 of people that have a 50% shot at not messing up so badly they die during the fight and you need 18 people to live through to the end of the fight to win, good luck progressing with your 0.02% change of having that happen. Hard mechanics and a requirement that the majority of people succeed at those mechanics is exponentially more demanding.

Raid difficulty is also more punishing because you can't make attempts easily, you need to assemble a large group to even practice. If you need more practice and are therefore messing up in front of that large group of people, it's embarrassing and stressful and you can get yelled at or flat out kicked out. That's way more punishing than Dark Souls.

What's hard for a below average player is trivial for an elite player - but 50% of the player base is naturally below average, 1% of the player base is truely elite.

Elite people in WoW have been elite for so long, they can easily forget that they weren't elite or that other people aren't elite.

Elite players in WoW tend to treat the game like serious fucking buisness. The average play treats it like a relaxing video game. Who has a more realistic view of what WoW actually is?

Elite people in WoW find things to be easier because they're good. But they also get exponentially better gear than the common man and tend to get it very quickly. That compounds how easy they find things, which tends to exaggerate how trivial they find things.

The average player doesn't want things to be trivial, they want it to be interesting but relaxing for themselves. Elite players can be so far away from the average player that they have a very warped view on what trivial actually is. Their feedback on difficulties that aren't intended for the elite is seriously warped.

If you think of yourself as an elite player and you're giving feedback on the easy difficulty, your feedback is worthless. Do you think a below average player will give valid feedback on the difficulty of mythic difficulty ('it's too hard')? No, they're way out of their league, it's pointless because it isn't for them.

If you say you want hard content, but also say 'after doing it on LFR I've seen it why would I want to do it again, I have no motivation?' that is prima faci evidence that you did not want hard content. Your desire for difficulty could not possibly have been satisfied by doing LFR, so you still should have that unsatisfied desire, right, how is that not motivation? Yet you deliberately waited for LFR to be released and deliberately chose it instead of going to a harder difficulty. If you deliberately went out of your way and waited to avoid difficulty, face it you never had an actual desire for difficulty.

[Jester Joe]

I don't even think you need to stretch to Mythic, even Heroic would probably make an apt comparison to Dark Souls.

But I'm not sure how many people actually claim WoW doesn't have challenge in raids except the few people after seeing the best guilds in the world clear the raid.

[Deja Thoris]

Lots of people here are good raiders but they fail completely when it comes to seeing things from others points of view. They also tend to have very selective memories. You'll find a lot of them will bitch that they wiped 250 times on Gorefiend Mythic and then come back a month later with "Lol that boss is eezy" type comments.

[Deleted]

Lots of people here are good raiders but they fail completely when it comes to seeing things from others points of view. They also tend to have very selective memories. You'll find a lot of them will bitch that they wiped 250 times on Gorefiend Mythic and then come back a month later with "Lol that boss is eezy" type comments.

people also fail to realise that this game is very old and lots of us have put in SEVERAL THOUSAND HOURS without really realising it. i dont think people really understand how fundamentally good at the game even the average player is after playing it that much.

[melodramocracy]

The mantra is 'never hard, just tedious', as it's a great way to be arrogant and shortsighted all in one fell swoop. Stick around long enough, and you'll find that it apparently applies to everything from vanilla Naxx up to matching Usain Bolt's 200m sprint times.

MMOC is full of wizards, it would seem.

[cFortyfive]

Is there some interesting point in this ?

[Viradiance]

That's an incredibly bad analogy because, by design, dark souls only requires a handful of buttons (bar movement I guess): 4 face buttons and 4 triggers. WoW has far too many abilities to map to a controller, let alone 5-input drum pads.

That said I don't think WoW is either incredibly difficult or too challenging. But you can't conflate a game with intentionally simplistic mechanics laid out in surprisingly deep and nuanced ways and, well, the opposite of that.

It's like comparing piloting a stealth bomber to google earth's flight simulator.

[lazorexplosion]

I don't even think you need to stretch to Mythic, even Heroic would probably make an apt comparison to Dark Souls.

But I'm not sure how many people actually claim WoW doesn't have challenge in raids except the few people after seeing the best guilds in the world clear the raid.

You could make the same argument about challenge modes, and PVP will always be challenging because you get matched with better and better people. So most of the entire endgame has very high difficulty content for a mainstream game.

And yet I still see people saying, basically, 'everything in WoW is too easy and dumbed down now' all the time.

[Bigbazz]

Thing is, from an individual point of view WoW would be pretty easy if you played in a raid group where the other players played without flaws. Like for example if the tank plays perfectly then the Melee dps will do a better job, it will be easier for them. If the healers are playing perfectly then the melee dps can afford to take more avoidable damage, if the melee are taking less avoidable damage then the healer is under less strain, if the other dps are playing perfect and are doing the fight in an optimal manner then as a dpser you would have more freedom to maximise.

The difficulty in WoW comes from teamwork, from needing to have everyone not only working together in unison but also to be all playing without mistakes at the same time, one person can let down a team of 19 other players who are playing well.. WoW bosses are easy when everyone does their job well, it's hard when more stress is placed apon specific players due to other players not performing, thus making it very hard for specific key players... If those key players fail as a result of the overstress then it can cause an overall fail.

It's not really comparable to a single player game where it's solely down to one person, WoW is about everyone doing their job as best they can whilst also doing it in a way that allows the other players to do their jobs as best they can... For sure it's a difficult game, but it would be easy if we could sit there and assign strategy, jobs and roles for perfect playing bots, and then dump ourselves into the fight as the sole human playing player... The bots could largely do the fight without you.

[PepeLePewPew]

The mantra is 'never hard, just tedious', as it's a great way to be arrogant and shortsighted all in one fell swoop. Stick around long enough, and you'll find that it apparently applies to everything from vanilla Naxx up to matching Usain Bolt's 200m sprint times.

MMOC is full of wizards, it would seem.

MMO's are time based by design. Difficulty is mostly about familiarity and routine, not innate ability and training. I tend to only use the word tedious when that time spent isn't entertaining, but nothing in WoW is truly difficult. It takes time, interest, organization and dedication to reach the highest levels. Groups who are experienced and used to working with each other get there faster.

As for the OP: I think the sentiment of losing motivation after LFR is a projection of elitists who are upset over accessibility.

[lazorexplosion]

That's an incredibly bad analogy because, by design, dark souls only requires a handful of buttons (bar movement I guess): 4 face buttons and 4 triggers. WoW has far too many abilities to map to a controller, let alone 5-input drum pads.

That said I don't think WoW is either incredibly difficult or too challenging. But you can't conflate a game with intentionally simplistic mechanics laid out in surprisingly deep and nuanced ways and, well, the opposite of that.

It's like comparing piloting a stealth bomber to google earth's flight simulator.

People have macroed many classes down to do okay dps with a few buttons, suboptimal, but hey so is a drum kit. Or just pick something else, how about charater level one, no healing flasks. For a hard game, you sure have to go to some extreme lengths to make it hard if you're elite.

[Foj]

people also fail to realise that this game is very old and lots of us have put in SEVERAL THOUSAND HOURS without really realising it. i dont think people really understand how fundamentally good at the game even the average player is after playing it that much.

GC repeatedly remarked that players were unable to understand the enormous size of the difference in skill present in the playing population, and the reasons for it.

As players continue not to understand it, the "skill gap" only continues to grow.

[Deleted]

Don't confuse the two concepts of difficulty. There is individual, mechanical difficulty on one hand and overhead and organisatzion required on the other hand. Compared to pro level Starcraft II (most likely Counterstrike or Battlefield as well) individual, mechanical difficulty of MMOs is pathetically low. However you need to have to have 25+ people above that skill level present for hours at the same time, these people need reliable, good internet connections, must have levelled and farmed for days (weeks, possibly months if you do lots of split runs), the ability and willingness to use voice communication and more.

That these people give misleading feedback concerning difficulty for the majority of customers is pretty clear. Many of former and current devs have been or are still hardcore raitards, so this flawed feedback is most likely shared and appreciated. It's one big, dumb echo chamber.

[Caliph]

Having raided heroic lich king to doing nothing this expansion but heroic BRF i can opine objectively on any of them. if all you do is heroic and then mythic you really shouldn't whine or cry about lfr and normal. personally i find raiding good for maybe 6 months and then it's just "omg /wrists this bullshit again". New mechanics or not so what. assemble, tank, heal, dps, dont stand here, move there, kill that first, cds on my mark, rinse repeat. it's really old now.

[Gadzooks]

Lots of people here are good raiders but they fail completely when it comes to seeing things from others points of view. They also tend to have very selective memories. You'll find a lot of them will bitch that they wiped 250 times on Gorefiend Mythic and then come back a month later with "Lol that boss is eezy" type comments.

There's another component to it, that doesn't have a name, but I've bumped into it for years.

Example: My friend was a total Windows tinkering nut. If there was a tweak you could do, he'd do it. He spent all of his time reading documentation and websites and such maxing out his systems and learning everything he could about them, short of going and getting certs (which he talked about, but didn't have time - and was making big bank as a professional photographer).

So, if you said to him "My laptop is a little slow" - you'd get a litany of "go do this on the command line" and "go tweak this config file", and would get angry when people's eyes would glaze over and wouldn't go do what he said to, that is was so easy to do.

So I explained to him "Look, to YOU, this stuff is easy. You have a HUGE foundation of experience and skill built up, but most people don't, and they aren't comfortable working that deep in the system files."

He thought about it, and I saw the light bulb go off over his head - he got it.

Same for a lot of raiders - they've been doing it a while, they have a guild that is ready to jump into the latest and greatest raid, they have a huge foundation of skills and experience built up, so to them, a lot of raid content is easy...to them.

And they do the same thing, they accuse others who don't do what they do as "lazy", when they don't understand how much work it is now, to build up to the point they're at. They don't get that everyone has a journey, and to someone who's just starting out, Heroic HFC is fucking HARD. They throw around simplistic solutions like "just join a guild" and "I only raid two hours a week, I don't know why people say it's a big commitment", with no CLUE what other people face getting to the same level they're at. They make wild claims about how easy content is, yet few of them have the same accomplishments they demand of others.

And, in their frustration and ignorance of reality, they fall back on childish insults - "lazy", "bad", "entitled", "toxic", "spoiled" - and refuse to help new players or lesser experienced players get to their level, they think players should show up with their exact same level of experience and skill - and then go on a campaign to demonize LFR as the reason why the game is failing.

The real problem is trying to keep this group of players entertained with new content, especially with a limitation of the wow engine. The devs try, and get instantly attacked if their precious raids aren't completely new and never seen before tactics or mechanics - the current sneer over recycled content is a good example of that. The devs are catering to a group of players who have NO empathy, understanding or regard for other players, all they do is demand more. I'd hate to have to design for a group like that - all they do is complain. They say raiding is good in HFC, but how often do they actually discuss that? And how often do they instead attack LFR, or LFG, or some other aspect of the game that has nothing to do with them?

And, nothing will change until these players grow up and get a clue and get a new perspective on the issues.


I'm not holding my breath.

[Herogamer555]

You can't say that only 0.02% of people killed Blackhand, because while that is accurate, it is very misleading. Not everyone raids, probably only 50% of the game population raids as their main form of play, of that 50%, you have to take in to account how many people even WANT to raid on Mythic, then you have to factor in how many people can raid on a schedule that allows them to be able to do Mythic (if you are in a different timezone it can be difficult finding a mythic group). Then there's several other things but I'm on my phone and I'm getting bored. All in all I would say a more realistic number is around 5%.

[PepeLePewPew]

You can't say that only 0.02% of people killed Blackhand, because while that is accurate, it is very misleading. .... All in all I would say a more realistic number is around 5%.

Because non-raiders don't matter and neither do raiders who don't care about mythic. You are such a stereotype, though investors might like your magic-math!

[Foj]

You can't say that only 0.02% of people killed Blackhand, because while that is accurate, it is very misleading. Not everyone raids, probably only 50% of the game population raids as their main form of play, of that 50%, you have to take in to account how many people even WANT to raid on Mythic, then you have to factor in how many people can raid on a schedule that allows them to be able to do Mythic (if you are in a different timezone it can be difficult finding a mythic group). Then there's several other things but I'm on my phone and I'm getting bored. All in all I would say a more realistic number is around 5%.

"It's too hard" and "No one wants to" are exactly the same thing when you are talking about a game.

[Trapped]

personally i find raiding good for maybe 6 months and then it's just "omg /wrists this bullshit again". New mechanics or not so what. assemble, tank, heal, dps, dont stand here, move there, kill that first, cds on my mark, rinse repeat. it's really old now.

That's a major issue in the game right now, imo. Match-making systems for "raiding with strangers" makes all that even worse. At least raiding with friends makes it better.

As more people quit guild raiding and go to RWS (raiding with strangers, heh), the raiding scene dies a little each time.

[Ryzael]

You can't say that only 0.02% of people killed Blackhand, because while that is accurate, it is very misleading. .... All in all I would say a more realistic number is around 5%.

Because non-raiders don't matter and neither do raiders who don't care about mythic. You are such a stereotype, though investors might like your magic-math!

Less than 0.0001% of players have swam from 1 end of a continent to the other at level 1, therefore it's harder to do than any raiding