Signs that blizzard are giving in to lazy players?

[xanzul]

Firstly, i'd like to say that i completely understand that blizzard are trying to aim WOW in MOP towards the more casual player and have seen the positive. However, i would like to voice my concerns and disappointment to the direction that wow is going.

It seems to me that Blizzard are totally ruining the hard work that they have done in the past, and merely down tuning it to make this game casual friendly, making the game feel very lazy
Some examples:

Professions-
These used to be skills that players would put time and effort into in order to reap in the rewards. Cooking- farming animals from different zones to level up. Fishing-moving from zone to zone and putting in effort to reach max fishing cap. Herbalism- visiting zones to pick different flowers. Now, in this current patch and looking at patch 5.3, it makes all these professions pretty meaningless. You can level max cooking at Halfhill very easily. Herbalism in the next patch means that herbs can be picked anywhere in Pandaria and so you can level it up without going to Kalimdor/Outland or Eastern Kingdoms. You can also do the same with Blacksmithing and ghost iron ore to level up

Not only does this damage the auction house economy via low level mats now but it makes these professions stupidly easy to level up at max level, making them feel quite worthless and unrewarding.

Raids-
I wont get much into LFR as i know that there are so many different views on it. I like the fact that it gives casual players to visit new content but it just gives an easy mindless gearing up route for the lazy wow player.

PVP-
It feels like blizzard have dug a huge hole, adding pvp power and now in patch 5.3, they want to change pvp and give resilience to every single player. While i see this is another good change for casual players as well as the removal of the 2.2k boundary on gear. It kind of ruins the whole "special" feeling of pvp.

TBC and WOTLK had a great pvp system i thought- rewarding players with gear when they reach a certain level for each set piece. This gave players who wanted to pvp something to aim for, something to achieve and feel proud of themselves. With a little time and effort put in on learning how to play, a lot of players would reach it. Now, i feel as though there is nothing to really aim for in pvp. It feels like daily quests- you have to cap every week to get to conquest point boundary where you can then buy the elite tyrannical gear( even this is being thrown away in patch 5.3).

From these points, while nice for the casual player which i understand, it really makes this game feel a lot less rewarding, a lot less special and kinda disappointing

Anybody else agree?

What is rewarding about a lvl 90 spending hours in low lvl zones to lvl gathering professions? What is rewarding about making items for skillups that serve no practical use anymore because the content it was implemented in is now outdated? The changes in 5.3 aren't for lazy players they are to streamline professions so they actually make sense. As for pvp making resilience baseline is perfectly fine as pvp power will still matter and I really don't understand how this makes players lazy. Instead of being insulting maybe you should just realize the game may not be for your anymore?

[xanzul]

Ok, OP, you have no idea what you are talking about and just picking at stuff for the sake of complaining.

They made cooking 1-600 easy, yes. But they made up for that with the Mastering, which required a lot of effort when the expansion was out. Cooking is a secondary profession, like First Aid, it should be fast and easy to level up without having to pay a lot for the mats off the AH.

Herbalism and Mining are an absolute pain to level up, and players resorted to botting (not just gold farmers use bots) to level it. While it won't stamp out botting completely, it's much better to focus on one continent that players are still happy to explore and still have stuff to do in (treasure finding, rare killing, dailies).

You should maybe do some research on BS levelling via Ghost Iron before commenting. It is EXPENSIVE to do it that way, most of the time you are better off leveling it the old fashioned way. It is there to fill the void if a certain material is unavailable or being sold for extortionate amounts on the AH.

The PvP changes have nothing to do with being lazy at all. They are trying to fix it. We still don't know why the changes were made and what else will be done, the patch notes have been out a day give them a chance to explain.

Also the change to gathering professions will make it so that players are gathering resources in zones appropriate for their lvl. I can't help but wonder if maybe this is a response to complaints about competition in cross realm zones and this is certainly going to improve the experience for low lvl players.

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 06:22 AM ----------

What? Since when have gathering professions been an absolute pain to level up? Especially since they've allowed flying in the old zones? If you can't easily level either of them while leveling your toon, you're doing it wrong. Even if you're power leveling it, it shouldn't take you that long. If players resorted to botting, it's because they're lazy, not because the profession is "a pain".

Part of the pain in lvling gathering professions is spending inordinate amount of times in zones far below your lvl. Again making it so that players can gather resources in zones appropriate for their lvl has nothing to do with being lazy. I don't find it particularly fun or rewarding or sensible about a lvl 90 picking peacebloom or mining copper ore.

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 06:27 AM ----------

A good load of constructive criticism and feedback, although some on the harsher side.
Maybe its just because i have been playing a long time and always dislike huge changes. I didnt want to comment too much on pve as i know what people on the forums are like when it comes to the particular topic of raiding.

Professions is the still thing that i am most disappointed by.Just remembering how long it took me to level my first two professions up to max level on one of my characters, feeling so proud that i finally succeeded with all that hard work and now professions are just a walk in the park to level .

It is getting rather old seeing players claim everything was better when things were more difficult in vanilla/tbc when the major reason for that was terrible game design. Wanting challenging content is fine but you are looking for challenge in all the wrong places.

[ringpriest]

I have to strongly disagree with the part about putting no effort into world building and quality. I really believe a lot of people dont understand how much work they have to put into not only creating new exciting content but also maintaining the old content too. The more expansions blizzard release means the more work overall they have to do.
Pandaria imo was a very good new land and very detailed imo, much more than some people realise as was the world changes in cataclysm including the new zones they added (I am referring to world quality here not content, that is another topic completely).

I didn't say they put no effort into quality worldbuilding, just that they're putting less effort into it and more on a smaller endgame. So there's less "journey" for people to experience; and to add insult to injury, there was also less "destination" at the end, particularly in Cataclysm. (I haven't been raiding, or even playing much in MoP - I understand at least in terms of raiding size and quality things may be improving.) And when I talk about quality worldbuilding, I'm not speaking of just the art design. I mean the adventuring experience, all the neat little details, quests, exploration, and how the story draws you into it. Dailies are no substitute for well-done world-spanning quest lines. (As an aside, why is it that making players run weeks of dailies to get access to end-game gear is ok, but making them do long, complicated questlines to gain access to end-game instances is verboten?)

To say blizzard are only focusing on giving players everything on a stick is simply not true, there are several area's in the game that the 'average' player cannot achieve right now without putting effort in, challenge modes and heroic raiding to name a couple (we can debate the difference in difficulty settings in raids + LFR but right now thats irrelivent, the fact is heroic raiding does exist).

Both challenge modes and heroic raiding are simply re-used content with the difficulty meter turned up. That's a perfectly valid approach in an action or strategy game; I've played Halo everywhere from Easy to Legendary and had fun doing it. But that just serves to drive home my point: World of Warcraft has moved quite a ways away from being an RPG, and is even moving away from being an MMO.

One of the things present in vanilla (and that slowly faded across the expansions) was that the world had depth. There were places you just didn't go, because they were full of tough, scary mobs and you would die if you just wandered in solo, or even in an unprepared group. The idea that only the bravest and boldest (and most heavily geared and prepared) adventurers would venture into Blackrock Depths or Molten Core added something to the world. The Black Temple was a horrifying place where a few wrong steps could lead to a wipe.

Human beings can attach value to things based on the effort needed to obtain them. By throwing the entire world at their players' feet, Blizzard has lessened it's import, and damaged players abilities to see it as a "real" place. And that's fine, if they just want Azeroth to be a background for some nifty arcade games. But I suspect that in the long-run, turning Azeroth into Super-Mario World is going to bite them where it hurts, hard.

[Tekkommo]

First thought I agree with the professions, then I think how boring it was farming mats, so I don't really care it's much easier to get mats these days. I'm so lazy these days I just buy what I need from the AH anyway. The professions have always been easy in this game anyway compared to others.

PVP has always been broken in this game, I don't know what great system you are talking about, as it was crap in TBC and crap in WotLK.

I agree that LFR is an abomination, but I understand why it's there. I don't like the fact you get free gear from it, as it is very easy, if it's there just so people can see the content, then you shouldn't get any loot. You can basically just ignore any gimmick in the fight, when I heal it, I normally stand in crap just so I have something to heal.

[Deleted]

Allright, i'll bite.
I'm a lazy player in your eyes, Because i can't invest countless hours into a game to be competitive.
Here's my part of the story. I used to be able to do this, invest countless hours to be actually competitive in PvP. and i liked being competitive, I still do by the way.
but, what some people don't manage to understand is eventually people won't have enough time anymore to do all of this, i'm talking about (in my case) opening a restaurant and working from 8AM to 11PM. I really enjoy my job, but i also really enjoy playing my favorite game, world of warcraft.
Just because i work alot, and cant invest loads of hours into a game, I deserve to get stomped by everyone i see because my "gear" is too bad?

I think blizzard finally realizes most of their playerbase (game is about 9 years old now) has grown older, and can't invest that much time in it anymore as they used to. (look at the decline of subs)
Most New (young) players don't get too attracted anymore to a game thats 9 years old, looks cartoonish (all they want is graphics) and has a leveling grind go 90, gear grind that takes longer then the leveling grind, and still has to learn the immense amount of abilities the game has at this moment of all classes.
It's just not attractive anymore for a new customer to pick up this game and start playing.

TL;DR: A hard working human that can't invest alot of time should be able to be competitive.

[xanzul]

In every way but 1 WoW has become easier.

They've tried to counter-balance the decrease in endgame difficulty by increasing the time and pain needed to gear up.

You might have a point if we were still in 5.0/5.1 but Blizzard has made some significant concessions in how we gear in 5.2. Between endless elder charms, crafting, increased drop rate in tier 14 LFR, rep from work orders, and rep from daily scenarios/5mans there is no legitimate reason why players should have difficulty gearing up regardless of play style.

[Vaelorian]

TBC and good pvp in the same sentence... Someone didn't play BC. Right now is ALOT more balanced then it was then. It seems like they want to push pvp into needing skill and not gear. It has nothing to do with lazy players.

LFR also has nothing to do with lazy players. It's there to give people who can't raid normal and heroic raids because of real life commitments a chance to do the content blizz puts hundreds of hours of work into. Before that all that work only got seen but a few % of the player base which would have seemed like a waste of time for them.

This just feels like a thread made for the sake of whining.

LFR has nothing to do with lazy players - sadly it is used by lazy players aswell as a means to just go afk/auto attack/die during the fight and just wait it out. Luckily there are also a lot of commited players in LFR who can carry these lazy players. So LFR by default has indeed nothing to do with lazy players and is not filled with lazy players. But it does harbour lazy players. Players like this wouldn't be able to stay in a guild if they acted the way they do in LFR.

[xanzul]

The only part I truly feel is wrong is giving ALL players resilence. Now, why have PvP gear?
You can stand up to PvPers in PvE gear now.

Pvp power says hi. I find it rather humorous that before 5.3 patch notes were released the pvp community did nothing but complain about pvp power and now all of a sudden they pretend it doesn't exist all for the sake of having something to whine about.

[freighttrain]

Firstly, i'd like to say that i completely understand that blizzard are trying to aim WOW in MOP towards the more casual player and have seen the positive. However, i would like to voice my concerns and disappointment to the direction that wow is going.

It seems to me that Blizzard are totally ruining the hard work that they have done in the past, and merely down tuning it to make this game casual friendly, making the game feel very lazy
Some examples:

Professions-
These used to be skills that players would put time and effort into in order to reap in the rewards. Cooking- farming animals from different zones to level up. Fishing-moving from zone to zone and putting in effort to reach max fishing cap. Herbalism- visiting zones to pick different flowers. Now, in this current patch and looking at patch 5.3, it makes all these professions pretty meaningless. You can level max cooking at Halfhill very easily. Herbalism in the next patch means that herbs can be picked anywhere in Pandaria and so you can level it up without going to Kalimdor/Outland or Eastern Kingdoms. You can also do the same with Blacksmithing and ghost iron ore to level up

Not only does this damage the auction house economy via low level mats now but it makes these professions stupidly easy to level up at max level, making them feel quite worthless and unrewarding.

Raids-
I wont get much into LFR as i know that there are so many different views on it. I like the fact that it gives casual players to visit new content but it just gives an easy mindless gearing up route for the lazy wow player.

PVP-
It feels like blizzard have dug a huge hole, adding pvp power and now in patch 5.3, they want to change pvp and give resilience to every single player. While i see this is another good change for casual players as well as the removal of the 2.2k boundary on gear. It kind of ruins the whole "special" feeling of pvp.

TBC and WOTLK had a great pvp system i thought- rewarding players with gear when they reach a certain level for each set piece. This gave players who wanted to pvp something to aim for, something to achieve and feel proud of themselves. With a little time and effort put in on learning how to play, a lot of players would reach it. Now, i feel as though there is nothing to really aim for in pvp. It feels like daily quests- you have to cap every week to get to conquest point boundary where you can then buy the elite tyrannical gear( even this is being thrown away in patch 5.3).

From these points, while nice for the casual player which i understand, it really makes this game feel a lot less rewarding, a lot less special and kinda disappointing

Anybody else agree?

Here is the one thing you kind of miss in your whole point. Pretty much since WC moving forward Blizzards goal is to take a genre and make it more accessible to anyone who wants to play. I don't know how far back you go, but Blizzard sent out surveys to EQ players basically asking them two things, what are the top three things you enjoy about EQ and the top three things you dislike about EQ. Then they went about making WoW and incorporated the top three likes and removing the top three dislikes.

Of course there was a lot more involved, but that is what they do. They take an idea and make it have broad appeal and easy for anyone who wants to try. However, you may have heard of easy to play difficult to master. Name me one top ranked PvP player who would be challenged by any non PvPer who decided to get some gear on a whim? Name me one LFR hero who will all of a sudden from a top ranked progression that will challenge DREAM for world firsts?

You nailed it right on the head with the word special. That word is code for I don't want others to have what I have. And that is all this post is really about.

[MaximusRex]

Not only does this damage the auction house economy via low level mats now but it makes these professions stupidly easy to level up at max level, making them feel quite worthless and unrewarding.

This makes no sense. It takes them same amount of time and gives you the same spread of herbs, you just don't have to go to the old world to do it. Its not any easier, it won't have any impact on the economy, so I'm not sure how picking herbs in Jade Forest instead of Elwynn Forest will make it feel worthless and unrewarding.

Everything else has low end and high end rewards, I'm not sure how that is lazy or unrewarding. You seem way too concerned over how other people play the game. If you find LFR too easy don't do it. You always had to chase points in PvP, I'm not really understanding how you think its different now then TBC.

Lazy also seems a strange term in using to describe a game as well. Isn't the whole point of games to be leisure activities? Like any other leisure activity some people play harder then others. Its like saying Little League and High School baseball are for lazy players.

[HardCoder]

There might be signs that Blizzard is giving in to "lazy" players, but coming up with a few hundred Fel Iron and Adamantite bars, have you tried that lately?

Exactly what is an appropriate reward for that? Because it sure as hell isn't what you get, which is 50 levels of blacksmithing/engineering.

[Syran]

Cater to them how?
By making the game more accesible to a multitude of players?
You'd have a point if the introduction of LFR destroyed heroic-raiding, but reality is that the raiding-team now gets a bigger budget.

Professions still mean the same as before: nothing.
Do you think they are any less time-consuming because you don't need to travel to the old continents? What a bullshit.

And why exactly is a player lazy because he has a job and can't raid on a regular time?
I'm willing to bet that I put more dedication in my LFR-raiding paladin than your heroic-toon.
The path you pick in WoW says nothing about the dedication or lazyness.

I don't think anyone can actually say professions meant nothing back in the day (pre-wotlk, even in wotlk maybe) with a straight face, I kinda doubt you played back then.

Crafted resistance gear, BS weapons (Stormherald, anyone?), LW drums, engineering gadgets, pots, flasks, armor, you name it, it wasn't just some gimmick no one used, it was a big advantage (drums rotation was pretty much required in late TBC, stunherald was almost BiS, and so on). It just feels pointless now because there's so much gear from so many sources, resistance fights are gone, engineering gadgets too because lol pvp balance.

Crafting certainly feels useless now, but years back this was far from truth.

[HardCoder]

Crafting certainly feels useless now, but years back this was far from truth.

I think players should be able to craft all kinds of useful stuff including BoA gear but it's true, there isn't much other than current tier PvP gear, and the random jungle hat and phantom blade that is worth making past the first month of an expansion these days.

[xanzul]

I don't think anyone can actually say professions meant nothing back in the day (pre-wotlk, even in wotlk maybe) with a straight face, I kinda doubt you played back then.

Crafted resistance gear, BS weapons (Stormherald, anyone?), LW drums, engineering gadgets, pots, flasks, armor, you name it, it wasn't just some gimmick no one used, it was a big advantage (drums rotation was pretty much required in late TBC, stunherald was almost BiS, and so on). It just feels pointless now because there's so much gear from so many sources, resistance fights are gone, engineering gadgets too because lol pvp balance.

Crafting certainly feels useless now, but years back this was far from truth.

Considering I can easily make 10-20k daily with professions I don't think they are anyway near to being useless. Not only do my sales prove that but the fact that people buy my items speaks to the fact that many other players don't consider them useless

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I don't know about you guys, but T14 and T15 are among the best raids we have ever had.

[Anjerith]

Another morning, another whine. Here I go;

Firstly, i'd like to say that i completely understand that blizzard are trying to aim WOW in MOP towards the more casual player and have seen the positive. However, i would like to voice my concerns and disappointment to the direction that wow is going.

Blizzard has made a very solid effort in bringing MoP more in-line with Classic and tBC in terms of character progression. That is why we have set dungeons and no way to quickly catch up your alts with your mains in terms of gear.

Professions-
These used to be skills that players would put time and effort into in order to reap in the rewards. Cooking- farming animals from different zones to level up. Fishing-moving from zone to zone and putting in effort to reach max fishing cap. Herbalism- visiting zones to pick different flowers. Now, in this current patch and looking at patch 5.3, it makes all these professions pretty meaningless. You can level max cooking at Halfhill very easily. Herbalism in the next patch means that herbs can be picked anywhere in Pandaria and so you can level it up without going to Kalimdor/Outland or Eastern Kingdoms. You can also do the same with Blacksmithing and ghost iron ore to level up

You still have to put the TIME into acquiring Herbs and Ore. You know what I pretty much do as a matter of course in previous expansions with ALL my characters? I went to the AH and bought everything I needed to maximize my professions - it took me about 30 minutes. I would like to know how giving players an ability to actually farm in areas they visit daily is making things easier? It's giving them another way to do things.

Raids-
I wont get much into LFR as i know that there are so many different views on it. I like the fact that it gives casual players to visit new content but it just gives an easy mindless gearing up route for the lazy wow player.

Thank you, I am sure your opinion is mostly what it typically is for these posts.

PVP-
It feels like blizzard have dug a huge hole, adding pvp power and now in patch 5.3, they want to change pvp and give resilience to every single player. While i see this is another good change for casual players as well as the removal of the 2.2k boundary on gear. It kind of ruins the whole "special" feeling of pvp.

TBC and WOTLK had a great pvp system i thought- rewarding players with gear when they reach a certain level for each set piece. This gave players who wanted to pvp something to aim for, something to achieve and feel proud of themselves. With a little time and effort put in on learning how to play, a lot of players would reach it. Now, i feel as though there is nothing to really aim for in pvp. It feels like daily quests- you have to cap every week to get to conquest point boundary where you can then buy the elite tyrannical gear( even this is being thrown away in patch 5.3).

Resilience sucks. Do you understand why they are removing the ability to stack it until your invulnerable? It requires no skill, it requires time. PvP players have bitched ENDLESSLY about how this game isn't about skill, it's about gear. Well, Now it's about skill - as much as it can be. No longer will there be groups of people hovering over quest areas that can mercilessly whack the shit out of people that just want to do their quests and log. And no longer will there be invulnerable teams that, frankly, are terrible players who just ground the hell out of getting some gear.

For me, Classic had the best pvp system, you worked your ass off to get ranks and if you didn't do the same thing every week you lost your rank. That system went out so long ago that I doubt most people even remember how awesomely bad it was, but I liked it. Any PvP system where you get a rank and you can keep it merrily with no effort required to maintain it is a stupid one, that is what they are fixing.

[Deleted]

im actually glad they added some shortcuts too proffesions like cooking.

when you're leveling it once agian on a new alt then i really cant be bothered collecting everything agian. so now i can just shortcut it when im lvl85 is really a boost to get higher level cooking on more then 1 char

[Syran]

Considering I can easily make 10-20k daily with professions I don't think they are anyway near to being useless. Not only do my sales prove that but the fact that people buy my items speaks to the fact that many other players don't consider them useless

By useless I mean severely lacking at higher level. I was selling entry level PvP sets in Cata like hot cakes too, but at higher levels it was mostly raiders with plenty of mats selling overpriced current normal-tier crafts. A few BS plans here and there, nothing special, just another edition of badge gear, BoE gear and boss drops.

Crafting in general always had an enormous potential, it was never really fullfilled. Different specializations, ingredients obtainable in different ways and difficulties, rewards other than armor, and so on.

[HardCoder]

Considering I can easily make 10-20k daily with professions I don't think they are anyway near to being useless. Not only do my sales prove that but the fact that people buy my items speaks to the fact that many other players don't consider them useless

Oh WHATEVER dude, OMG, it's possible to make gold with professions, but it's generally boring as all fuck.

I made gobs of gold the first month of MoP, was probably the first [Master of All] on my server, but geez, grinding out gold by making utility crud is just terrible and brain rotting. I find the AH a lot more interesting.