Originally Posted by
MasterHamster
In the spirit of making games more and more accessible, the non-stop removal of entry levels to surpass sure is changing how games are being designed. Games rarely dare to challenge their players, because they are just going to complain about it. This is a major reason why any content Blizzard releases nowadays is consumed in 1-2 weeks, even by casual players. There are no dangerous enemies, there are no gear checks outside of heroic/mythic raids or M+.
A new island is released and you can be certain it's a cakewalk for any character that has spent at least 24 hours the last 2 months gathering free gear.
WoW will always keep giving more things to those who want to grind, want to commit, and want to do anything they can to get that tiny little edge... but the ratio of time invested and reward has already passed the limit. Unless you progression raid, there's no point in grinding anything, because in the next update you're going to be showered with free loot that beats everything you have anyway.
If what games used to be was Diablo 2, modern games are Diablo 3. As someone who has had an account pretty much active since january 2006, what has happened is akin to being heavily invested in Magic The Gathering and seeing it turn into Hearthstone. That doesn't mean Hearthstone is a bad game, but it has removed all forms of depth for accessibility for the casual, 30 min / day players.
And I am amazed that people somehow don't get more annoyed that non-premade raid/high m+ content is as insultingly easy at it is. Do you play all other games with Godmode on as well I wonder?
You can make games easier, more accessible, easier to get into. You can keep making it faster and easier so that anyone can within a dozen or so hours can jump into the prime content the game has to offer... but they won't stay for long. Now, you have to play other games to at least find an even bare-minimum amount of challenge as a solo player. Just a gigantic smörgåsbord of loot-pinatas firing gear at you. That at least is BFA in a nutshell. Designed for 2 groups of people, casual players who want to play no more than 2-3 hours / week, and heroic/mythic progression raiders.
WoW devs should all take a week off and play Divinity Original Sin 2, and maybe they'll remember that having a good curve in challenge and rewards, means that players will (yes, they will) be more inclined to learn, improve andtry again. Or they can decide that their character(s) are currently too weak, go somewhere else and gather Exp and better gear, and come back later. That is a core RPG element that WoW has seemingly abandoned.
Knowing you may lose is what gives games excitement. There's nothing fun or enjoyable (for a long period of time anyway) about games if you know you're always going to win. It is f'ing embarrassing from a game design PoV to see what the WoW devs are doing. It's as if they genuinely think making all non-raid content braindead easy keeps players interested in the grinds they "need to do" so they can progress in raids. I am not going to pretend like I am some sort of representative of the part of the community that doesn't raid, but it's like seeing people who can't even tell *why* they're bored, as they repeat the same unfailable content over and over.