A look at WoW's design on RNG, grinding and self control.

[SoulSoBreezy]

TL;DR - You can listen to it!

It's been a while since I've posted transcripts here, and I'm not a popular Youtuber anyway but hey, no harm sharing a wall of text, right? =D
Below is a full transcript of a recent video essay.

Imagine this scenario.
You’re playing the World of Warcraft. You hop into a dungeon with some friends and blow through it quickly. At the end you receive Valor points. In fact you’ve now obtained 2000 Valor this week, and you can’t earn any more till next week. And it’s not even the weekend yet. What’s your next action?

Now imagine this other scenario.
You’re playing the World of Warcraft. You hop into a dungeon with some friends and blow through it quickly. At the end you receive Valor points. You can earn as much Valor as you like so long as you complete dungeons, and it turns out that you need to do ten dungeons. Those ten runs will get you enough currency to buy that item you need for tomorrow’s raid. What’s your next action?

As players we have certain kinds of behaviors depending on a few main factors, including who we are and what sorts of rules or conditions are set for us. The design of a game like WoW can take a goal or reward, and offer different journeys to take us there. Fortunately, WoW has been around long enough that it’s borrowed, evolved and revolutionized gaming systems in the MMO genre. And we can look at how they’ve affected players.

Today we’re going to talk game design in WoW, specific to the mechanisms that cater to and challenge a player’s self control. As a longtime player it’s been really interesting seeing the different kinds of reward and progression paths WoW has offered over the years. The current system has a few key features that are very different from earlier systems when it comes to pacing and self control. It’s natural that one approach may please one player and offend another. I think it’s important that when talking about this topic we should acknowledge that there are in fact players that are more happy with how WoW operates now than before. And of course there are players that feel the opposite way.
Who outnumbers who isn’t important; what is, is that both exist and have a voice.

Before I actually start here’s the usual disclaimer. My experience in this industry doesn’t include game design. My analysis comes from first hand experience, curiosity and fascination with this subject. Weaponize my statements as you will.

The inspiration of this analysis comes from the recent grumblings from players about Legion, and the systems that equate to an intolerable grind of content. Let’s go over some of them.

Artifact power (AP) is a supplemental experience system that strengthens a character’s weapon through the building of stats and traits.

Titanforged is a bonus system that gives quest and loot drops a rare chance to be stronger than its base attributes.

Legendary gear in Legion is considered to be an extremely rare drop with a system of “bad luck protection” that helps reassure players they’ll receive this gear after performing activities in game.

Mythic Keystone dungeons are another new content platform in Legion that allows players to tackle more difficult versions of familiar dungeons for the rewards mentioned just earlier. This is a cornerstone that we’ll get into later, so let’s push this out of the way for now.

Of these three rewards that are offered, only AP is what I’ll label as a guaranteed reward system. The amount received is a direct result of a player’s action. A world quest that rewards AP is guaranteed to give AP.

Titanforged, legendaries and similar RNG systems don’t quite fall into this category due to the lack of direct result from player actions. These are bonus systems that are on top of existing systems, that is, rewards that we already get. An emissary cache is guaranteed to drop something, and it might include a legendary or Titanforged piece. A boss drop will drop gear, although it might not be gear for you, and again a legendary or Titanforged piece might drop.

Titanforged is outside of the player’s control. The only difference between two players’ ability to acquire Titanforged pieces lies with how much more opportunity they have, or basically, who plays more than the other.

Legendaries work almost the same way, but with its low drop rate comes a form of bad luck protection. When an action is completed that could possibly drop a legendary, and it does not, a hidden value is added to the drop rate based on the difficulty of the activity. Essentially it’s a way to speed up the drop rate of a legendary up to the point it is earned, and then the bad luck protection value drops back to zero. The hidden value is based on the difficulty of the content performed, so in a way, players who complete the most difficult content in the shortest amount of time will theoretically obtain legendaries faster than others.

Of course these rare finds are still behind a system of luck, or RNG, that severely limits the player’s control over their own destiny. Stories of legendary finds, some seemingly ridiculous, are peppered in chat rooms and forums, but it’s these stories that have become the perception of what today’s RNG is in WoW. WoW is more than the story of Azeroth, but the individual stories of each player. Of those, not all stories are told in these chat rooms and forums, but mostly the ones that trigger a response, a flash of envy in this case. Does this influence perception? Or are some of these communities echo chambers of opinion that might be misunderstood as truth?

Enough of that though. Let’s talk about grinding and game design.
Grinding is a gaming term, based on the adjective defined as the state of an action being “oppressive, tedious, and seemingly without end.” The use of the word is typically neutral or derogatory to describe the long slog of repetitive actions towards a goal or reward. AP is a recent and effective example. Calculating AP gains is pretty simple, requiring only a few variables to be filled in, and then for the player to execute on them. In fact, calculating the grind isn’t necessary as long as the player knows they’ll be playing the game. Minimal play to max out their artifact weapon will take longer than three months, a rough average it takes for a more competitive player to get to that level. But it will eventually occur, much like all characters will reach level 110 through normal play.

But AP is different from previous currencies that related to player power. Currencies like Valor and Conquest points capped out for the week, even if that meant not being able to purchase gear until the following week. AP can be obtained indefinitely, limited behind AK. In a way AK prevents players from quickly reaching high levels on their weapon through grinding, but why was it designed this way? It would have been easy enough to alter AP requirements to where AK isn’t needed and is replaced with a weekly cap.
Just my guess, but when designing this supplemental progression system Blizzard posed the following question to themselves: What happened in the past when players capped on Valor, Conquest, or any other system that had a weekly limitation? Back then, many players just stopped doing the related activity, or were locked out of it altogether. What this means is that for a single character, there’s a visible, hard limit to what can be done in a given week before the growth of that character is zero until the weekly reset. From there, players switched to an alt to repeat the process, or considered themselves “done for the week,” to return to the game once they could earn points again.
As a note, this still occurs with raids and regular mythic dungeons, which are on a weekly loot lockout, as an example.

A system like valor is very predictable for both players and designers, moreso than AP. A weekly valor cap means the prices of valor goods can be adjusted in such a way that the valor system itself has a lifespan when assuming a player caps it each week. This ties almost directly to what the projected length of a raid tier is, based on the potential gear level of an average player who progresses primarily through valor.
Critics of grinding call this system in particular “time gating,” where no matter what a player does, Blizzard already set control of the pacing. Self control isn’t in question because Blizzard gave players the answer. The following argument is often stated: Blizzard uses time gates to give players the illusion of content and stay subscribed for a longer period of time. The foundation of this is based on the perception that subscriber numbers are important to Blizzard, at least important enough to put on display until recent years. In my opinion, it’s one point to make but alone, this is an incomplete argument.

In the business of gaming there is a measurement called Daily Active Users (DAU), which means exactly what you think it does. When more players are actively playing the game each day, the higher this number gets and the more successful your game appears to be, at least on a certain day. This is one of many measurements of health that also include revenue, subscription count and so on. We could have millions of subscribers but if the DAU number spikes on Tuesday’s weekly reset, then falls to only a tenth of that by the weekend, that’s a sign of high revenue but an inconsistent flow of content to players, and thus a poor foundation to maintain that revenue and a negative outlook on the game. It’s still just one more indicator, though.

I’m mentioning this because in a WoW where there are daily and weekly caps there is a limit to the usefulness of a single character, and not all players have many alts to call upon. In the place of these caps we have AP, which is almost the same thing without the strict cap, but instead a reasonable soft cap on how high your level can be before pushing the next level takes an unreasonable amount of time without AK.
What this does is remove the scenario of having a character being “done for the week,” theoretically raising the DAU because there’s always something to do. With AP, there is always a value to activities, even if it’s small. Despite misgivings with the system, AP and AK strike a balance. Scaling AP requirements per level discourages perpetual farming but leaves it open if that’s really your thing. AK keeps players progressing at a reasonable if inconsistent pace.

Mythic Keystone dungeons however, don’t share the same diminishing return as a platform. Assuming all keystones are equal, a player can continue to farm them as long as there’s a group capable to participate. It’s here where a player’s sense of self control is challenged in the face of a virtually unlimited system and the social nuances that come with that.

Self control is defined as “the ability to control oneself, in particular one's emotions and desires or the expression of them in one's behavior, especially in difficult situations.”

Players of WoW have different goals with opposing extremes, from sightseeing as a denizen of Azeroth to being one of the top players in the world. And with those very different goals come very different journeys to get there. But for all the variances in goals, there is one thing they all have in common.
They’re chosen.

There are two planes of fulfillment to consider here, one that has to do with completion, and the other to do with competition. These thought processes often blur, leading to recurring arguments between players who may think they’re on the same level because they share commonalities as WoW players, but may not be because their goals are very different.

Completing mythic raid content is as urgent as the needs of the group or the individual player. The journey towards casually completing it before the next tier is very different from completing it first on your realm, region or worldwide. Mythic keystone dungeons have allowed a widening divide mostly in one direction, allowing the most hardcore players to push repeatable content with almost no restrictions. Meanwhile other players’ habits may not change much. This is only slightly offset by the randomness of Titanforged and Legendary pieces that can drop for any level of player, however this is less likely to change the routine of less competitive players . For them, this really is a passive bonus as Blizzard intended, and despite the feelings of the most harsh critics of RNG, they represent the smaller if not louder chunk of the population.

Does that mean these rare drops for casual players are considered wasted in the eyes of hardcore players? For some, yes. Others may be too busy farming keystone dungeons to bother.

Keystone dungeons are considered to be the most difficult but farmable content in Legion, which makes farming them the most efficient method of obtaining Legendary pieces and as a consequence, AP and Titanforged gear. With this in mind comes the first time in WoW’s history that the following is true:

Unlimited progression = Unlimited potential = Unlimited expectation

This is obviously extreme, but another way to see it is that if an equipped item level of 900 is possible, you must aspire for it because someone else probably is.
It’s been said time and time again that if there is an optional path to becoming a stronger character, it’s no longer optional; it’s required.

The most hardcore players of WoW have burdened themselves with a system of perpetual grinding. And there’s a growing mindset that the Titanforged and legendary drop rate systems aren’t a bonus, but a gamble to be played again and again. Players have come out to voice their concerns of fatigue and burnout over farming for Titanforged, hidden legendary soft caps and competing with fellow players who have gear that they were lucky enough to obtain.

But they chose this path.

So who’s to blame? Is it Blizzard’s fault for designing virtually unlimited gameplay for a single character? Is the competitive scene using this as an excuse to have unreasonable expectations for aspiring players? Is the more outspoken part of the community spreading a misleading narrative of the state of things?

Pacing is one of many pillars of game design, and is extremely fragile. Becoming too powerful too early on trivializes the experience of the rest of the game. Reaching a certain level of power and all of a sudden having to backtrack and farm fire resist gear can be jarring. Requiring revered reputation to access a single heroic dungeon can feel gated. Valor caps can look like an illusion of spread out content. RNG can look like gambling and lifting limits can burn players out.

For its flaws and dissatisfaction from some players, Blizzard is trying an approach to character progression that in one view challenges self control but in another view gives more control to the player than ever before.

[melodramocracy]

Unlimited progression = Unlimited potential = Unlimited expectation

I disagree. What tends to happen is that your ability to 3 / 2 chest a mythic is going to quickly outpace your comparative gear level if you're using your own key for runs with the same group. And while it's true that you can effectively farm lower level keys as much as you like, your chances for actual upgrades are, of course, far smaller from these instances.

And despite all the apparent increased power distribution that's going on in this expansion, mythic raid clear stats are pretty much in line with what they've always been, with 1-2% of participating guilds clearing the content.

The most hardcore players of WoW have burdened themselves with a system of perpetual grinding. And there’s a growing mindset that the Titanforged and legendary drop rate systems aren’t a bonus, but a gamble to be played again and again. Players have come out to voice their concerns of fatigue and burnout over farming for Titanforged, hidden legendary soft caps and competing with fellow players who have gear that they were lucky enough to obtain.

That's a playerbase problem, not a Blizzard one. The issue, as always, is that some players expect to complete content that was designed to last 3+ months in less than 1, and if they can't, it's either overtuned, or they're not getting upgrades quick enough.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

That's way too long to read but regardless you are wrong. Naw. Jk I'm sure it's well thought out

[Zyster]

I'll be honest. I didn't read basically anything besides RNG because the rest is just so long! Just figured given the thought of this thread I would throw in something I wish more MMOs would do with RNG. I wish RNG existed, but was more controlled. I figured the best way to do this is if something has a 10% chance to drop, the game keeps a counter of this for this. In raiding scene. Somehow keep a counter on the leader or something of each raid. Anyways, if that item hasn't dropped by your 10th kill it is guaranteed to drop. Either as one of the guaranteed amount of loot, or an extra piece of loot. In my mind I originally decided extra loot, because by that point does it really hurt to give an extra piece? Progression raiding and the sorts are usually finalized in terms of competition etc... Basically every time a piece of gear drops the counter is reset.

[Wrecktangle]

I'll be honest. I didn't read basically anything besides RNG because the rest is just so long! Just figured given the thought of this thread I would throw in something I wish more MMOs would do with RNG. I wish RNG existed, but was more controlled. I figured the best way to do this is if something has a 10% chance to drop, the game keeps a counter of this for this. In raiding scene. Somehow keep a counter on the leader or something of each raid. Anyways, if that item hasn't dropped by your 10th kill it is guaranteed to drop. Either as one of the guaranteed amount of loot, or an extra piece of loot. In my mind I originally decided extra loot, because by that point does it really hurt to give an extra piece? Progression raiding and the sorts are usually finalized in terms of competition etc... Basically every time a piece of gear drops the counter is reset.

FF14 uses a token system. Bosses drop loot and a token. If the loot isn't useful to you, you can accrue those tokens (weekly lockout) and then use them to purchase missing upgrades when you accrued enough. I actually kinda really wish WoW had this, maybe even not only from a raiding perspective, but even a dungeon perspective. After x amount of runs you could turn in for a specific piece of loot, that had a chance to TF/socket/tertiary etc. This way you could spend the tokens on gambling a specific low chance high value upgrade or various other immediate upgrades.

The bigger hurdle with said system would be how would it work with the various levels of M+/raids? Would each level/difficulty have different tokens? Would each dungeon/raid/boss have its own specific currency? Would it maybe apply to whatever the highest level of content you cleared that week? Would they be accrued indefinitely (ala AP farming) or daily/weekly lockout?

Every idea presented above comes with new problems that'd need solving. Not an issue, but a point to note regardless.

[melodramocracy]

So people aren't a product of their environment?
Systems design does not influence player choice at any level?
Human perception is infallible?
Blizzard cannot mold expectation?

You being a product of your environment has very little to do with the presence of immediate gratification gameplay expectations in an MMO of all things (which is absolutely based around long term, persistent play).

[Doombringer]

"it's a problem with the playerbase, leave it up to them" ...

Unfortunately, it's a problem that will never be corrected if left entirely up to the playerbase. There will always be influential people (raid leads) in positions of power (guild master/officer) who have unrealistic expectations of those around them (guilds). We're not talking about known hardcore / bleeding edge progression guilds -- in those, players who sign up should know what they're signing up for. I'm talking about the average guild with a try-hard GM who thinks he can be the next world first if only he can crack the whip harder.

Blizzard's implementation of gating or throttling saves Mike Morheim an appearance at a congressional hearing concerning unhealthy gameplay. And, it gives Johnny an excuse to tell his guild leader "I'm already capped this week, I'm going to take my wife out to dinner."

[pmkaboo]

You being a product of your environment has very little to do with the presence of immediate gratification gameplay expectations in an MMO of all things (which is absolutely based around long term, persistent play).

i dont want immediate gratification, i want objectives, or quests, that i can complete to claim rewards.

[melodramocracy]

i dont want immediate gratification, i want objectives, or quests, that i can complete to claim rewards.

You have those. Arguably in higher frequency than past expansions.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Backtracking is consistently used to show the player how far they've come, its' incredibly empowering when player's are enjoying their experience, otherwise waiting for the sweet release of death.

Pacing is the manipulation of Expectation and the function of expectation is to surprise the player in a positive way, which means if you have backtracking the player must already expect it to then have it shortened very rarely, discovering shortcuts and secret teleports.

Now imagine trying to convince a player in a game whose mode of travel has been teleports, portals and fast vehicles; A) now they can't use those and you have to convince them it's a good thing, or B) in spite of using all those things it will still take forever to get there. How do you positively surprise such an expectation that you already created?

A) Pulls the rug under the player, now you have to give them candy to shut them up
B) Has to find a way to distract the player's boredom by leaving a trail candy

You're going to run into expectation creep, giving them candy without earning it disrupting the reward effort balance, showering the player with bigger and better things wherever they go in hopes to positively surprise them, and of course they just don't give a shit after a while and just want the reward and not the journey. They will eventually EXPECT to just be rewarded, and they are not wrong the game design fully facilitates it.

I don't think we're on the same page regarding backtracking. Or maybe I'm simple-minded =).

I see it as returning to an earlier area to trigger the sense of how far we've come, and then introduce a new element to freshen the experience. I imagine the idea of "farming fire resist gear" today would be to go back to an old instance where it's tuned to max level and shows a state of progression since we were there last, and farm away.

Farming the same old level 56 instance works mechanically, but like I said, it *can* be jarring (for some players).

[pmkaboo]

You have those. Arguably in higher frequency than past expansions.

care to point out some examples? because last time i checked the best way to get legendaries was to just cross your fingers and do whatever, many hidden artifacts skins were pure rng, many rank 3 recipes were rng and AP was so heavily time gated that it wasnt even worth it starting an alt before 7.1.5...

[melodramocracy]

care to point out some examples? because last time i checked the best way to get legendaries was to just cross your fingers and do whatever, many hidden artifacts skins were pure rng, many rank 3 recipes were rng and AP was so heavily time gated that it wasnt even worth it starting an alt before 7.1.5...

You stated that you wanted "objectives, or quests, that i can complete to claim rewards", which absolutely exist in the game in higher frequency than in the past.

World quests will yield more gear at a higher frequency for a fresh 110 (up to 840's) than dailies have prior. All of these have a guaranteed 100% baseline droprate.

If you participate in mythic + dungeons, you are guaranteed a piece of loot each week, not to mention guaranteed loot from mission based mythic runs. etc etc.

Just because titanforged / legendary items have a wildly RNG element to them does not mean that the entire game is built around this premise.

[iky43210]

You stated that you wanted "objectives, or quests, that i can complete to claim rewards", which absolutely exist in the game in higher frequency than in the past.

World quests will yield more gear at a higher frequency for a fresh 110 (up to 840's) than dailies have prior. All of these have a guaranteed 100% baseline droprate.

If you participate in mythic + dungeons, you are guaranteed a piece of loot each week, not to mention guaranteed loot from mission based mythic runs. etc etc.

Just because titanforged / legendary items have a wildly RNG element to them does not mean that the entire game is built around this premise.

Shouldn't be comparing world quest to dailies. They're more comparable to either the token system or tannan jungle upgrade system where you either do easy heroics for valor tokens to trade for pre-raid gear or farm mobs for loot and upgrade them in wod.

WQ is completely rng to what gear spawns and its frequency. Not to say the 845 gear actually doesn't spawn until you are near 840 ilvl anyway

[Chaelexi]

See the feedback is too long thread and then give a proper TLDR. Wall of text does not make anyone want to read it

[Deleted]

Thing is, in all previous expansions, WoW reward system was based of :

- Normal dungeons you could complete as many time as you wanted per day,
- Heroic dungeons you could get a reward from once per day,
- raids you could complete and get a reward from once per week.

This design ensured that you could get to raiding easily, and then complete the content once per week. To keep things short, that design made sure the players would not grind themselves out to the point of getting burnt out. And to compensate, raid were tuned so players would spend a few evening per week to complete the raid relevant in regard to the player's gear (because the former raids didn't drop relevant gear once the players outgear it).

In legion, everything is done very quickly and the failsafes from previous expansions (to prevent burn outs) are gone. Players can virtually farm as many MM+ as they can get their hand on players with mythics+ keystone, and players are encouraged with the RNG reward system to farm as many raid dificulty and dungeon difficulty they can to potentially hit the RNG jackpot. Meaning that technically players are never done farming in legion.

The problem isn't an issue of self control. The issue is the game is built with the idea that most players will never been done farming the content, which doesn't increase the longevity and the retention of the game. People need to understand that it is ok to reach the end of the game (well, on a player standpoint anyway) once all the content has been seen (and several level of difficulty for one content doesn't really count as more content). If you analyze the complaints from former expansions, the issue wasn't that player reached the end of the game. The issue was too little content was developed in regard to the completion rate of the players and blizzard's ability to release more content. By delaying the completion rate of the players with artificial means (like the RNG loot system of legion), you do not increase most player satisfaction (well, most players anyway, I m sure you could always find people who actually like to grind endlessly the same content).

[pmkaboo]

You stated that you wanted "objectives, or quests, that i can complete to claim rewards", which absolutely exist in the game in higher frequency than in the past.

i did, as a reply to ongoing discussion about legendaries and xforged upgrades. i thought its obvious im not complaining about lack of quests....