Do you think Ion/devs understand their player base?

[Nebron]

I dont know why you hate LFR that much. Nobody needs to do LFR for anything but for its storymode. You get better gear from WQ, holiday events and timewalking. Doing LFR for gearprogression is the worst possible way.

And still, blizzard says the participation is there and they keep the difficulty mode in the game. You cant just post things like "It'd be a lie to say that LFR can be associated with fun." because people clearly have fun, because there is nothing else to gain from doing LFR.

LEGIONs bad-luck-protection had its issues with the need to do every lower difficulty including LFR for the weekly min-max but it was an issue across every difficulty modes. Broken tier sets are gone for the same reason, the need to do lower difficulty modes to gain advantage was not healthy nor "fun".

And thats gone in BfA. No tier set, you raid essences are capped in mythic>hc>n>lfr and even the ilvl you get from LFR is beyond other and easier content. Nothing but a storymode.

EVERYONE does LFR for the gear. Because everyone absolutely knows that it's just a free items run. Get rid off the items from LFR, and NONE would go there for the sake of story. Not to mention that there's hardly any story.

You wish to attend the raid and see G'huun yourself? Than get your normal group, with other people, get through some mechanics and get your look at the boss with the rewards. Put some effort in time to see it. I don't even want to get into the idea of getting something with true commitment simply tastes better, but whatever.

It was not just LEGION's issues with the Legendary drops and getting legendary questline items from LFR. It began in freakin MoP where you could get, and I'd like to emphasise - LEGENDARY cloak, from the rep grind and LFR runs... then it moved onto the rings in WoD and with the introduction of Leggies in Legion, started to be a problem there.

If you are not willing to commit your time into the game, you should not be rewarded, and it's a pretty simple concept to understand. I don't give a shit about people, who ain't got time or skills to the the very basic normal. If people are so lazy that they need to go to an AFK-fest to see what happens in the raid and collect their unwarranted stuff, then there may be no hope for any improvements for the game.

Tier sets should be brought back, but the point about locking the item slots by tier items seems pretty reasonable, so as Ion said in an interview, they may come back in like 2- or 3-pieces sets. And what exactly do you mean by broken? Their power? So instead of making them less powerful, we will just get rid off them - great idea!

Raiding was a part of "elitism" back in the good old days. It filled you with joy to see the bosses. You was stressed out before any fight. It was something magical. Now, all the content is being catered to the least-demanding playerbase.

I got really tired of talking to you about this problem. You can't comprehend it. Or you are simply unwilling to. I'm also not a native speaker, so it's kind of a barrier to me to speak in english. Just think for yourself about it, with a critical thought. Just think about these two concepts: how much LFR takes away from the game with gicing away a free loot, no matter how good it is, for NOT A SINGLE REASON. And then, think how lazy people got that they whine about the NEED for LFR so that they can, I don't know, take a glimpse at the last boss... Jesus, just make a normal raid so that you will be at least rewarded for an effort of utilizing the mechanics. How unheathly it is for the game.

Whatever.

[Dadwen]

EVERYONE does LFR for the gear. Because everyone absolutely knows that it's just a free items run. Get rid off the items from LFR, and NONE would go there for the sake of story. Not to mention that there's hardly any story.

You wish to attend the raid and see G'huun yourself? Than get your normal group, with other people, get through some mechanics and get your look at the boss with the rewards. Put some effort in time to see it. I don't even want to get into the idea of getting something with true commitment simply tastes better, but whatever.

It was not just LEGION's issues with the Legendary drops and getting legendary questline items from LFR. It began in freakin MoP where you could get, and I'd like to emphasise - LEGENDARY cloak, from the rep grind and LFR runs... then it moved onto the rings in WoD and with the introduction of Leggies in Legion, started to be a problem there.

If you are not willing to commit your time into the game, you should not be rewarded, and it's a pretty simple concept to understand. I don't give a shit about people, who ain't got time or skills to the the very basic normal. If people are so lazy that they need to go to an AFK-fest to see what happens in the raid and collect their unwarranted stuff, then there may be no hope for any improvements for the game.

Tier sets should be brought back, but the point about locking the item slots by tier items seems pretty reasonable, so as Ion said in an interview, they may come back in like 2- or 3-pieces sets. And what exactly do you mean by broken? Their power? So instead of making them less powerful, we will just get rid off them - great idea!

Raiding was a part of "elitism" back in the good old days. It filled you with joy to see the bosses. You was stressed out before any fight. It was something magical. Now, all the content is being catered to the least-demanding playerbase.

I got really tired of talking to you about this problem. You can't comprehend it. Or you are simply unwilling to. I'm also not a native speaker, so it's kind of a barrier to me to speak in english. Just think for yourself about it, with a critical thought. Just think about these two concepts: how much LFR takes away from the game with gicing away a free loot, no matter how good it is, for NOT A SINGLE REASON. And then, think how lazy people got that they whine about the NEED for LFR so that they can, I don't know, take a glimpse at the last boss... Jesus, just make a normal raid so that you will be at least rewarded for an effort of utilizing the mechanics. How unheathly it is for the game.

Whatever.

You do know awhile back the Dev's said they really could not justify the amount of time spend on raids Pre LFR for something just a small % of the player base did.

I'm for getting rid of LFR and cutting back on raids size and numbers and them using that Dev time to make more\bigger outside world zones, sound good?

[Bhanzai]

Considering they are the ones that have all tha data I imagine they know far more than the idiots who come here or wow forums to constantly whine.

[potis]

You do know awhile back the Dev's said they really could not justify the amount of time spend on raids Pre LFR for something just a small % of the player base did.

I'm for getting rid of LFR and cutting back on raids size and numbers and them using that Dev time to make more\bigger outside world zones, sound good?

No, that was just the excuse for them politely saying.

"We changed so many things over the year, we removed attunements, we went and separated raiding modes after seeing the raiders are getting better and are interested in harder content like Hard Modes, so we went and split the mode to Normal and Heroic and even 10man versions, and even we gave you free gear to clear that normal mode with ICC dungeons, we even gave you 14 months, and you completely useless scrubs still couldnt even manage to do shit all, and just a few more people finally pugged to Gunship and then a whole expansion of this, and the majority still completely failed, this time even at the dungeons with Cataclysm".

So instead of saying the truth they went and said "Yeah LFR is story mode to make sure people see it so we can excuse the cost".

[Dadwen]

No, that was just the excuse for them politely saying.

"We changed so many things over the year, we removed attunements, we went and separated raiding modes after seeing the raiders are getting better and are interested in harder content like Hard Modes, so we went and split the mode to Normal and Heroic and even 10man versions, and even we gave you free gear to clear that normal mode with ICC dungeons, we even gave you 14 months, and you completely useless scrubs still couldnt even manage to do shit all, and just a few more people finally pugged to Gunship and then a whole expansion of this, and the majority still completely failed, this time even at the dungeons with Cataclysm".

So instead of saying the truth they went and said "Yeah LFR is story mode to make sure people see it so we can excuse the cost".

I raided in LK, (one of the last time I bothered with it) and they are right most players didn't raid (and IMO a lot of that had to do with some of the dick raiders chasing new people off). *Raiding in WOW was always kinda easy mode compared to the old early days of EQ raiding IMO.

make perfect logic why put so much effort into part of the game only 15% (being generous) may ever see.

[TheFirstOnes]

I think Ion genuinely cares about his fan base. The problem is that a lot of others at Blizzard don't. Especially the WoW team.

[Pony Soldier]

I think they do but they don't care. All they care about is finding new ways to keep people subbed for longer. That's their main objective and is the main reason why there's so much time gating in this game. It's to make you feel like you have to come back and continue the grind until you get what you want. They don't care about the depth of their content or the quality only that they get people addicted enough for them to keep coming back for more. The more subs and the longer they stay subbed = more money in their pockets and that's all that matters to them.

All they care about is the money. I'm willing to bet they make more money off of their overpriced garbage e-shop than they do subscriptions. Why people continue to support that shit is beyond me. $10 for a little pet that does nothing but follow you around and look cute and $25 for a single mount in a game where you're already paying for a subscription (a pricey one at that) and for the game itself on top of that. With that many mindless suckers why should Blizzard bother changing their ways?

[Shammyrock]

Count cases when players complained right from the alpha, dev's handiwork still went into release and then they admitted they fucked up and only fixed shit half-expansion later. There's your answer.

I think you're overestimating the scope of what can be changed between alpha and release.

[Zeek Daniels]

The only reason I voted no is because it's hard to understand the feelings of 3 million plus people who all have different opinions, wants and needs within this game. Your not going to please everyone with every decision you make. We are not a homogeneous player base ith mononomus thoughts.

[Rafalga]

No.

Completely ignored alpha and beta feedback for the past couple expansions clearly supports that.

Also little bit of this;

I think they do but they don't care. All they care about is finding new ways to keep people subbed for longer.

[Zyky]

I think they understand high-level raiders very well. That is not surprising.

See I disagree. If they understood high-level raiders, they'd know that very few of them enjoy any of the current features in game from gearing to encounter design. Just talking about this expansion:

- Mythic G'huun requiring a minimum of 3 Warlocks to be killable.
- Mythic Fetid not allowing you to have more than 4 melee.
- Mythic Azshara being a mess of an encounter, because everyone LOVES not being able to DPS because you have to drop a debuff every few seconds.
- Mythic Crucible of Storms being overtuned for way too long, to the point that only 42 Alliance guilds worldwide cleared it for Cutting Edge.
- Titanforging remaining a thing and now the addition of a new system that's just more convoluted(that they'll continue to balance raids around having said pieces).
- Having a grind that's mandatory and that requires hours of time outside of raiding every day just to remain relevant; being the Heart of Azeroth.
- Azerite Armor still being a mess of a system the entire expansion with little actual fixing, doing nothing they promised during the beta(a replacement for tier it is not, a replacement for Artifacts it is not, a fix for losing Artifacts and Legiondaries it is not).
- The continued ignorance over Alting. Top end or low end the time investment for alting or waiting to take an alt seriously is not realistic for the average working person.

[Nebron]

You do know awhile back the Dev's said they really could not justify the amount of time spend on raids Pre LFR for something just a small % of the player base did.

I'm for getting rid of LFR and cutting back on raids size and numbers and them using that Dev time to make more\bigger outside world zones, sound good?

1) I didn't hear that.

2) I'm not sure whether cutting the size of raid zones is the way to save some dev's time, but the size of the zones or their numbers should be increased. So yeah, I'm here with you.

[digichi]

I think they finally get that, for a large part of the playerbase, the main attraction of the game is interacting with the rotations of your class and the content- not just the content itself. So when you streamline classes too heavily, you lose many casuals who would play through whatever you threw at them as long as they could have fun with their character. I know devs are designers who want to make new+fun, but if the goal is truly to make a -fun- and interactive game then they shouldn't shy away from pulling from old design decisions at different points the game felt in a great place (not just focusing too much on philosophy, as it can get warped).

More focus on differentiating classes from build-build-spend gives them more identity to stand out apart from each other clearly (in terms of cadence of button pressing when doing your rotations). That's quite important and would encourage people to make more alts if they're having fun interacting with refreshing rotations and cadences. I know they don't want to change the status quo on classes too much, maybe there's just realistically not enough time or manpower to do just overhauls every expac, which is understandable. But classes were ever changing for a long, long time. A player from TBC probably doesn't recognise BfA shadow priest at all, ever since WoD/Legion, or an old combat rogue is wondering where their spec went, there is an understanding that the game is ever changing. Classes are such integral parts of the gameplay experience that i don't think they can be left behind without considerable refresh from time to time.

[Relapses]

The universal complaint about Warlords nearly from the start was that there was nothing to do after leveling and finishing your Garrison if you were not interested in raiding. They dropped from over 10,000,000 subscribers to 6,000,000 in just nine months. That's not raiders. That's casual players with nothing to do. Warlords was a fairly decent expansion for raiders for the first 15 months or so.

Polygon wrote a decent article about it which I would recommend reading if you haven't. Patch content was sparse and the 6.1 patch wasn't really a content patch at all.

After that, Hazzikostas was very careful to say any time he could that Legion would have plenty of stuff for casual players to do. And it did. They more or less followed that pattern with BfA (perhaps too closely). I don't believe that BfA is the worst expansion ever. I think it's a middle-of-the-road kind of expansion myself. But there is stuff to do. And Shadowlands promises another campaign-style quest line and the endless dungeon thing along with the rest. I'm sure there will be a bunch of patches as well and how that works out remains to be seen. But I expect there's going to be things to do.

So that's why I think Warlords was a sort of watershed for Blizzard and casual players. People can disagree with that but there's a lot of strong evidence that the increased team size was substantially about more non-raid content.

I do think that Hazzikostas understands what the game needs. I don't know how well that gets implemented into the design. Almost by definition, WowCraft game designers are not casual players so they are guessing as best they can two years in advance what casual players are going to like.

The one thing I think they've missed is professions. There maybe should be a team that just does nothing but professions. If you want to keep casual players around for a long time, allow them to be makers and sellers. Make professions something that you need to be in the world to do properly. It's a missed opportunity for them. Even something as dismissed as archaeology could be interesting if they would simply tell stories through the artifacts. Stories are good things. People like them and to discover little arcane points of lore.

To add to the fuel that Warlords represents an incredible shift in developer direction, just look at all the scrapped content which had been planned for it. I fully believe the reason all of that content was abandoned was due to extreme pressure both internally and externally to go back to the drawing board and double down on designing a game that wouldn't repeat WoD's fatal mistakes.

[anon5123]

Of course they do. But the players aren't as important as the shareholders.

[netherflame]

I'm curious to see what you all think. I personally, think they do..but not on the level that players want them to.

Counter question, do you think the player base understands Ion/devs? Typically in my experience the playerbase thinks very short term while the devs are forced to be thinking 2 and 3 years ahead. The players are always 10 steps behind.

[Relapses]

See I disagree. If they understood high-level raiders, they'd know that very few of them enjoy any of the current features in game from gearing to encounter design. Just talking about this expansion:

- Mythic G'huun requiring a minimum of 3 Warlocks to be killable.
- Mythic Fetid not allowing you to have more than 4 melee.
- Mythic Azshara being a mess of an encounter, because everyone LOVES not being able to DPS because you have to drop a debuff every few seconds.
- Mythic Crucible of Storms being overtuned for way too long, to the point that only 42 Alliance guilds worldwide cleared it for Cutting Edge.
- Titanforging remaining a thing and now the addition of a new system that's just more convoluted(that they'll continue to balance raids around having said pieces).
- Having a grind that's mandatory and that requires hours of time outside of raiding every day just to remain relevant; being the Heart of Azeroth.
- Azerite Armor still being a mess of a system the entire expansion with little actual fixing, doing nothing they promised during the beta(a replacement for tier it is not, a replacement for Artifacts it is not, a fix for losing Artifacts and Legiondaries it is not).
- The continued ignorance over Alting. Top end or low end the time investment for alting or waiting to take an alt seriously is not realistic for the average working person.

...I really don't want to sound rude but have you read or watched any of the dev interviews about Shadowlands? A large number of your gripes were specifically mentioned and seemingly remedied.

[Guildenstern]

I guess you cant be all wrong when the community literally screams at you what it wants. But more often than not Ion has made terrible mistakes. He shouldn't have been left the sole director when Chillton left.

[Relapses]

I guess you cant be all wrong when the community literally screams at you what it wants. But more often than not Ion has made terrible mistakes. He shouldn't have been left the sole director when Chillton left.

Game design is still a very much collaborative effort. Ion's the mouthpiece for ideas that come from both above and below him. Much like GC from the past, players love to villainize the guy because he says some dumb shit sometimes but it's important to understand he is not single handedly responsible for pretty much any of the changes WoW implements.

[darklogrus]

I think you're overestimating the scope of what can be changed between alpha and release.

Except some of those issues was the result of the past expansion which they were aware of.