Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[jbombard]

And what about all that other content that was created for casuals? Sure its nothing to do if you dont care about it but doesnt mean it doesnt exists.

If Blizzard was actually going to remove LFR then they would replace it with something else or a mix of other things. Only those who will only do LFR will have nothing to do. At least according to GC most players have no interests in raiding so it doesnt matter if they dont have time for raiding guilds. Also you do not need to be apart of a guild in order to raid. There is such a thing called PuG raiding that casuals participate in.

If they are going to replace LFR any alternatives would have to offer a similar rate of progression. If you think elitists are pissed at people getting epics from LFR, getting full epics from non-raid content should really piss them off.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 04:36 PM ----------

If they are going to replace LFR any alternatives would have to offer a similar rate of progression. If you think elitists are pissed at people getting epics from LFR, getting full epics from non-raid content should really piss them off.

@Glorius Leader
I agree with most of that, but my luck in LFR was never bad. Still you are relying on a random system for the majority of end game progression. No catch up means no time to play alts, another problem. IMHO the biggest problem with LFR and no catch up is everybody wants to run different raids for the pieces they need and because there is no catch up every single new raid wing comes out and further splits in the player pool into tinier groups causing queue times to continuously go up.

[nekobaka]

None of it was a serious attempt to engage casuals by rewarding them with character progression. When pet battles give out epics then we can talk.

Oh course that content wasnt allowed to be comparable to LFR or otherwise less players would engage in LFR and queues would suffer. Some players cant get an LFR group formed during some times of the night as is. Imagine what would happen to LFR queues if you could get equal gear outside of LFR. Blizzard made the best non-normal/heroic character progression in LFR. Even those who do dailies have to do LFR to spend their VP. Five mans which used to be such a strong driving force have been sidelined due to the gear shift being in favor of LFR. Nothing fundamentally really changed about LFD but things around it did.

Pet battles are more of a side game for all. Dont you get charms from them which can win you epics? Sure not the same thing as directly giving you one but still holds value to a heroic mode raider in terms of character progression.

[Glorious Leader]

@Glorius Leader
I agree with most of that, but my luck in LFR was never bad. Still you are relying on a random system for the majority of end game progression. No catch up means no time to play alts, another problem. IMHO the biggest problem with LFR and no catch up is everybody wants to run different raids for the pieces they need and because there is no catch up every single new raid wing comes out and further splits in the player pool into tinier groups causing queue times to continuously go up.

3 hours in cataclysm would net you alot more gain then 3 hours in mists or 3 hours in a mists lfr. Non deterministic character progression is TERRIBLE. It's not a staple of rpgs (regardless of what the developers tell you), it's ultimately a frustrating soulless experience and the fantasy of loot was NEVER that you might get a piece based on some algorithim running on the back ground. I can't think of a single fantasy novel I read where the protagonist kills a dragon on the chance that he MIGHT get a piece of loot... based solely on some arbitrary number rolled in the background.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 07:54 AM ----------

Oh course that content wasnt allowed to be comparable to LFR or otherwise less players would engage in LFR and queues would suffer. Some players cant get an LFR group formed during some times of the night as is. Imagine what would happen to LFR queues if you could get equal gear outside of LFR. Blizzard made the best non-normal/heroic character progression in LFR. Even those who do dailies have to do LFR to spend their VP. Five mans which used to be such a strong driving force have been sidelined due to the gear shift being in favor of LFR. Nothing fundamentally really changed about LFD but things around it did.

Pet battles are more of a side game for all. Dont you get charms from them which can win you epics? Sure not the same thing as directly giving you one but still holds value to a heroic mode raider in terms of character progression.

Well that's also why I said it's better now than it was at 5.0. they added heroic scenarios with a "chance" for gear, still more chances. However with rep tabards and 7 dungeons a week to cap your net gain was far greater cataclysm IF you could complete the dungeons. Well you can get carried through dungeons if your bad. Can't get carried through rng. They do have a tendency of bribing people to do whatever system they like.

[nekobaka]

This is VERY important to understanding the subscriber loss in mists. IN cataclysm SOME players were able to progress enormously fast. They consumed content at a rapid pace (still do today regardless of the efforts on the part of the developers) and as such claimed they were "bored". The solution to this was to turn the rate time to reward ratio wayyyyyy the fuck down. This was done primarily but gutting the valor system and not adding any new dungeons with new gear as catch up.

That in large part what ticked me off about MoP. Cata for my time investment to reward was more casual friendly than WotLK. In WotLK if you did not raid then you got almost jack shit for the equivalent badges of VP that a raider did if they full cleared two raids. A lot of players complained in WotLK about not being able to catch up to raiders and Cata somewhat resolved that by equalizing VP rewards. That then resulted in players who never before stood a chance at getting all the VP items from the vendor while the content was current to getting it all within a few months and going "I got nothing to do, give me more gear or I quit."

Oh and about some people, those altohalics that was VP capping all ten of their toons with ZA/ZG complaining about not having time to raid because they didnt want to only focus on one character, they had to play on all or bust. They was loud in the forums and some of them still are.

If they are going to replace LFR any alternatives would have to offer a similar rate of progression. If you think elitists are pissed at people getting epics from LFR, getting full epics from non-raid content should really piss them off.

I dont really care as long as the effort is comparable and there is not much effort required for LFR already. Dailies could be considered more effort than LFR is. Had some LFRs QQ about heroic scenarios, sure sounds like an imbalance right there. I go by an effort to reward ratio idea in this game which is what this game is supposed to be based off of. So I am completely fine with players doing dailies and getting VP and then getting VP gear with it. It takes a long time to do such. I think the VP behind a reputation is BS. The whole reason why dailies got VP was to give players options other than dungeons and LFR.

[Glorious Leader]

That in large part what ticked me off about MoP. Cata for my time investment to reward was more casual friendly than WotLK. In WotLK if you did not raid then you got almost jack shit for the equivalent badges of VP that a raider did if they full cleared two raids. A lot of players complained in WotLK about not being able to catch up to raiders and Cata somewhat resolved that by equalizing VP rewards. That then resulted in players who never before stood a chance at getting all the VP items from the vendor while the content was current to getting it all within a few months and going "I got nothing to do, give me more gear or I quit."

Oh and about some people, those altohalics that was VP capping all ten of their toons with ZA/ZG complaining about not having time to raid because they didnt want to only focus on one character, they had to play on all or bust. They was loud in the forums and some of them still are.

I dont give a flying fuck as long as the effort is comparable and there is not much effort required for LFR already. Dailies could be considered more effort than LFR is.

Given their current pace of content release I see no problem with upping the reward system. Remember we shouldn't necessarily be trying to cater to people who play 5 or 6 hours a day. Or even 2-3 hours a day. Those people will consume content at such a rate regardless of how grindy it is. They'll get on alts or they'll simple log off. Even in mists they still haven't been sated and the cost to all of this is that people who can only play like 3-4 hours a week get nothing. You know for many players raid logging was an ideal way to play the game. The irs a very obvious reason why they said casuals weren't engaged during the annual sub report investor meeting thingie. The game doesn't seriously engage them.

Once again it is far better now than it was in 5.0 but we still have a long way to go.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 08:09 AM ----------

. So I am completely fine with players doing dailies and getting VP and then getting VP gear with it. It takes a long time to do such. I think the VP behind a reputation is BS. The whole reason why dailies got VP was to give players options other than dungeons and LFR.

The problem is that if it takes a long time to get anywhere than the individual hour of time becomes less and less valuable. In other words it becomes less and less casual friendly. 3 hours in cataclysm was far more rewarding EVEN IF all it was was tunneling dungeons for valor and then gear.

[Deleted]

I find it extremely unlikely that so called "exclusive" content is what retains subscribers. Especially given what the developers have said on this matter. You people REALLY need to stretch to make your arguments work.

Whereas i agree that its almost impossible to point at any one design change thats responsible for the drop in subs, i do think that every new design feature since Cata should be held accountable to some degree. The question is how much is it responsible.

The question of 'exclusive content' is very much a major factor in the design direction of Wow overall and because of this it can be discussed as a factor connected to the loss of subs.

The design direction of Wow since Wrath is very much a factor in the loss of subs. It might not be the main reason for the unsubbing but its certainly one of the top reasons.

[Glorious Leader]

Whereas i agree that its almost impossible to point at any one design change thats responsible for the drop in subs, i do think that every new design feature since Cata should be held accountable to some degree. The question is how much is it responsible.

The question of 'exclusive content' is very much a major factor in the design direction of Wow overall and because of this it can be discussed as a factor connected to the loss of subs.

The design direction of Wow since Wrath is very much a factor in the loss of subs. It might not be the main reason for the unsubbing but its certainly one of the top reasons.

I see no evidence that the loss of so called "exclusivity" vis a vi raiding has caused a loss in subs. It is extremely counter intuitive to suggest that the minute players could participate in content they were previously locked out for (for whatever reason) they immediately decided to unsub en masse as a response. It is basically a myth propagated by a loud minority of players largely in an attempt to disenfranchise and marginalize the larger part of the player base for pig headed and ignorant reasons which are themselves based on fundamentally flawed assumptions. It is just as likely (in fact I would argue more likely) that people left the game because it got hard.

[Tomana]

lol @ "you people". You can argue whatever you like. The numbers are right there. When the game didn't have LFR or the casual direction for development, the game thrived. Afterwards, well you have what they have today and dwindling subs. You can be as angry as you like. The numbers don;t lie.

You're making the most common logical fallacy on Earth "post hoc ergo propter hoc". Look it up.
Also, numbers don't lie when read by a competent person. Somehow I doubt your competence on the subject.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:37 AM ----------

Anyone can do anything any other player can do. Period. Certain players do not have a special ticket or pass that only allows them to do certain things.

Yes, in a vacuum where they don't have jobs, families and other commitments.
I'll tell you something even - some non-raiding players I know are very good at the game, they just can't afford raiding.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:38 AM ----------

So you buy into everything Blizzard says? I don't, they will put a spin on anything to justify their fuck ups, heck look how many times they back tracked on difficulty ESPECIALLY Ghostcrawler!

They can't afford lying during the shareholder conference calls, at least. It's a serious crime.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:39 AM ----------

Reading that reminds me of lines from Carlin.
"You know what they call a loser these days? You were the last winner."
"They never get to hear the character-building words: Your a loser Bobby! You lost, your a loser Bobby!!"

Because life = video game. But of course.

[Deleted]

I see no evidence that the loss of so called "exclusivity" vis a vi raiding has caused a loss in subs. It is extremely counter intuitive to suggest that the minute players could participate in content they were previously locked out for (for whatever reason) they immediately decided to unsub en masse as a response. It is basically a myth propagated by a loud minority of players largely in an attempt to disenfranchise and marginalize the larger part of the player base for pig headed and ignorant reasons which are themselves based on fundamentally flawed assumptions. It is just as likely (in fact I would argue more likely) that people left the game because it got hard.

I agree with u... that its impossible to point to any one factor to explain the subs losses.

My point is that its foolish to dismiss the change in overall game-design direction as a contributary factor to explain these subs losses. And like it or not, the exclusive content change is part of that game design change since Wrath.

[Tomana]

What did you people do before LFR? Obviously you enjoyed the game or you wouldn't still be playing, so what kept you playing if you couldn't raid?

Simple: In BC and WOTLK I raided in a great HM guild (but I no longer can raid because I don't have the time), in Cata I slacked until 4.3, in 4.3 LFR arrived.

[Osmeric]

im guessing the TLDR version of that is "fuck you and whatever you say"

I think he's saying your point of view doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. Viewing the game design in moral terms is just incoherent.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:29 AM ----------

I dont get why people seem to think its unfair to reward skill

And here that spurious moralizing rears its ugly head again. It may be fair to do that. It may also be a fail game design.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:50 AM ----------

When pet battles give out epics then we can talk.

I have an amusing suspicion that one of the final parts of the legendary quest chain will involve grinding out pet battles.

[khalltusk]

I think he's saying your point of view doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. Viewing the game design in moral terms is just incoherent.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:29 AM ----------



And here that spurious moralizing rears its ugly head again. It may be fair to do that. It may also be a fail game design.

They reward "skill" in the forms of heroic content and its rewards (gear mounts heroic only bosses and what have you).

I honestly do not get this toy snatching mentality from some people. LFR serves a purpose, if there was no LFR I may not have bothered with MOP. I don't have the will or time to commit to a raiding guild so LFR lets me some content get some gear and play at my own pace. Flex raiding will hopefully give me more of a challenge and I am hoping I can collect a few more friends to do it with.

As for skill/time rewards the game does this. It just scales it according to the mode you selected. Do LFR well the time/skill involved gives you the weakest in game rewards. Do normal mode? You get medium rewards in form of gear and some mounts and you can unlock heroic! Heroic mode provides the best gear but the greatest challenge! some bosses are heroic only and are optional to the story/progression.

We get rewards appropriate to our time/skill level we select to play the game on. This is a win win. People who crave that extra challenge or better gear etc have that option. Those who don't/won't can select a lesser difficulty and still make some progress.

[Osmeric]

They reward "skill" in the forms of heroic content and its rewards (gear mounts heroic only bosses and what have you).

But they are not doing it for moral reasons. Why are they doing it? I suspect they are counting on a larger fraction of the hardcores to become "whales" when the game goes F2P.

[Floopa]

This thread is totally ridiculous.

Exclusive content isn't a bad thing. It's just apparent that you need 5000000 APM (ignoring that most classes only require 60 APM max) and 100/100 vision (20/20 isn't good enough, gotta min max your eye vision) to play WoW. This means that 99.99999% of the WoW population who apparently aren't blessed by God to be supreme in the realm of gaming and apparently are loathing the fact they have a family: a wife, children, a job deserve content more than those who work their arses off to min max their character and play 14-16 hours a day during progress.

Rant over. But seriously? Get the fuck over yourselves. Unless you're doing HC modes you aren't good at PvE. End of discussion. Even heroic is bloody easy nowadays. There's only 1 hard fight in ToT on HC and that's Lei Shen, and with LMGs and legendary cloaks the fight becomes a total joke. No need to BL in p1 so save for p3 and beat p3 in like 2 minutes. Super hard.

[khalltusk]

But they are not doing it for moral reasons. Why are they doing it? I suspect they are counting on a larger fraction of the hardcores to become "whales" when the game goes F2P.

possibly but F2P is a long ways off. Most likely because the Dev team are mostly hardcore raiders them selves and the fact they rely on the really high end guilds for a lot of PTR testing could be a factor. Initially the raids were made that way because thats how MMOs did it (vanilla/tbc) but we have seen this change.

Regardless of their moral choices for the reward system I think its pretty good. Not perfect and is in need of tweaking which they seem to putting the effort into. I just think that some people seem to forget that many games have a difficulty setting and MMOs should be no different.

[Flower Milk]

This thread is totally ridiculous.

Exclusive content isn't a bad thing. It's just apparent that you need 5000000 APM (ignoring that most classes only require 60 APM max) and 100/100 vision (20/20 isn't good enough, gotta min max your eye vision) to play WoW. This means that 99.99999% of the WoW population who apparently aren't blessed by God to be supreme in the realm of gaming and apparently are loathing the fact they have a family: a wife, children, a job deserve content more than those who work their arses off to min max their character and play 14-16 hours a day during progress.

Uhh, what? Do people really think this? I think the average guild raids about 2-3 hours a night, 3 at the most. I don't raid anymore, but my boyfriend does in a heroic guild, and he raids 3 hours a night 3 days a week. I spend more time than him in the game doing dailies, LFR, and anything else outside of raids, the things he doesn't need to do past a certain point because he gets gear from raids.

[Floopa]

Uhh, what? Do people really think this? I think the average guild raids about 2-3 hours a night, 3 at the most. I don't raid anymore, but my boyfriend does in a heroic guild, and he raids 3 hours a night 3 days a week. I spend more time than him in the game doing dailies, LFR, and anything else outside of raids, the things he doesn't need to do past a certain point because he gets gear from raids.

"During progress". Top guilds spend 14-16 hours a day raiding. Method, BL, Envy, etc.

[Flower Milk]

"During progress". Top guilds spend 14-16 hours a day raiding. Method, BL, Envy, etc.

Yeah, those are a HUGE minority though, and your chances of getting into those guilds as a first time raider is slim to none. Like I said, "the average guild".

Too many people think raiding requires this giant commitment, but really it is just showing up a certain time to play a game for a few hours a few times a week, something a lot of players already do anyway. Any other requirements are ones the specific guilds themselves make, and there are raiding guilds that cater to all play styles.

[khalltusk]

Yeah, those are a HUGE minority though. Like I said, "the average guild".

Back in Vanilla our guild did 5 days a week raiding with 5hours a piece (never again!) TBC the guild I joined did 2 raids with 4 hours per raid. Still managed to clear BT and SWP before wrath. took a bit longer but we got there! It can be done on a lesser time scales but some guilds want a crazy amount of commitment. I loved it when I had the time for it but I don't think I would ever willingly put my self back in that frame again.

Most guilds i've been in since have been 2/3 raid nights a week.

[Deleted]

I see no evidence that the loss of so called "exclusivity" vis a vi raiding has caused a loss in subs.

U keep using the phrase "no evidence" and yet there is "no evidence" to suggest that it ISNT in any way to blame for recent sub losses.

The truth is that the entire subject of subs losses is open to discussion. And everyone connected to Wow has different opinions to why these subs r in decline. Like it or not its perfectly reasonable to suggest that the direction of the game since Wrath is just as reasonable to discuss than every other theory.