Anti High End Mentality

[NineSpine]

Ashran skill books.

Please enlighten me as to how temporary 1 hour abilities are just like the covenant system.

[Nobleshield]

Players don't perceive content that is beyond them as "things to work for". They perceive it as either irrelevant or an insult.

Street famously told us that their data shows that players largely don't step it up. If you increase the difficulty of content across an expansion players will figure that out and skip the rest of it. The scheme you suggest has never worked.

That seems more like a player issue then to feel that having multiple levels of content, including some that you can do and enjoy doing, means that you shouldn't bother to try.

I remember that quote from Ghostcrawler but it always seemed to be in regards to having difficult content as a baseline (see Cata Heroics at launch because "dungeons should be hard" but they were a bit too challenging for average people). Are you really saying that if there were 3 tiers of raiding, people who may still be on the first tier will quit because they aren't on the third, even if they are having a challenge (not "its too hard" I Mean an actual challenge they can overcome) on the first? Again, that sounds like a player issue with perception and "keeping up with the Joneses" although I will say that the WoW community's general elitism and caste system doesn't help (by which I mean the whole "Any guild stuck on X is a scrub guild" sort of mindset)

[Laughingjack]

Please enlighten me as to how temporary 1 hour abilities are just like the covenant system.

You gain unique abilities to use?

There isn't a answer your going to accept its simply showing how borrowed power existed before.

[NineSpine]

You gain unique abilities to use?

There isn't a answer your going to accept its simply showing how borrowed power existed before.

You are completely delusional if you think a one-hour temporary ability is the equivalent of the covenant system. I'm now starting to suspect you are just a really good troll, because of how laughable that statement is.

[bloodykiller86]

Tons of people run non-mythic dungeons for the reasons I outlined. Whether or not *you* think they are worthless is irrelevant.

those people are and far and few. the majority of people in WoW want gear. They still have access to do that if they really want but mythic+ is great. Imagine as a dev having all those dungeons only to be useless after the first raid. its a massive waste of time

[Kolvarg]

Well that's just opinion, still people played privat servers which had other "specific systems at the time")

Well of course, there's not much more than opinions here. But it is a fact that since Cata as far as we know this has always happened. MoP, WoD, Legion and BfA all have had a significant surge in players by the expansion launch, followed by a fairly steep decline in the following couple of months, returning the number of players to the previous trend. Or, in other words: the surges in players by new expansions are an outlier, and so are the decreases after the surges.

So while still conjecture, considering how different all those expansions are from each other, I think it's fairly reasonable to assume it's more related to the overall popularity of the game and how the interested players engage with it, rather than specific flaws of a given expansion. There is more evidence of this than there can be of what you are defending (which can essentially only amount to anecdotal evidence from individuals who personally disliked something).

Yes it's important, but not "as". Here <1> <2> we talked about similar stuff, that's "content vs gameplay" discussion.

Difference in systems for specifically WoD was hidden under link of its name. And it says what exactly has changed from previous time and why it was bad. No, it wasn't "same systems/gameplay", and there're plenty of reasons for leaving besides "nothing to do". Also, "worth" word, in your case, slightly changes phrase position and turns everything just towards “systems” rather than “content” (it's not in your favor), because it could worth for the process, not for rewards/BiS

I mean, you might have had a different experience, especially depending on which class you played, but as far as I'm concerned, with WoD being the expansion that I was most active and engaged in retail WoW, I very distinctly recall the main complaints being about the content, particularly the cut content and lack of thereof, not the classes.

Were there more "different" things between WoD and MoP? Sure. But honestly, they're not all that relevant. I don't think those issues would result in such a quick drop in players.

Plus ultimately, for nearly anything that they can change that will displease someone, they will please someone different. Sure some of WoD's features might have driven some players away, but it also made it more appealing to certain players of different taste.

I don't see a way of how it's defensible that such specific reasons being the main plausible factor behind why so many players left. And if it was, then what was the cause of the same exact thing hapening in Legion and BfA?

[Alkizon]

I mean, you might have had a different experience, especially depending on which class you played, but as far as I'm concerned, with WoD being the expansion that I was most active and engaged in retail WoW, I very distinctly recall the main complaints being about the content, particularly the cut content and lack of thereof, not the classes.

Do you see problem in this part? I'll hint you: you played not because there was "a lot of to do" (content), which mea-a-ans... what? What do you think in this case was determining factor (even if it’s just personal to you), better gameplay or content?

So... what's more important in particular case?

People often don’t know themselves what they want, they just feel dissatisfaction, this is what happened. Actually, task of good psychologist is almost always to highlight point in discussion from which it all began, but in this case these are gameplay flaws, and there were a lot of them, as I already said. Lack of content was too obvious and that exactly "patients" loudly announced on the forums, but that was "far from the only problem". You liked it? wonderful! I’m not going to devalue someone’s personal opinion or experience, but in general this is rather special case.

[Casperite]

The new argument is that without random power increases in gear the only way to get better gear is raiding and high end content

But ppl are used to killing a boar with a random chance at getting powerful gear beyond what was normally available

Take that away and they feel punished like blizzard is taking away their toys....but everyone is actually effected

They don’t like ppl able to hit an end point because that means they hit an end point

Essentially they want big bad gear for nothing and blame raiders claiming WoD 2.0

No, they want to be able to progress their character without having to do boring ass raids every week. Without some way of progression there really ceases to be any motivation to play. For me personally, if raids are only way to progress my character at a certain point, then I am done. I just find raids to be horribly boring.

[Kralljin]

They actually made a statement on this one. The bean counters at Activision looked at how much money the raiding department was using, then compared it to how many people were actually seeing that content, and didn't like what they saw. So the raiding department started getting slashed. Which is why we had yet another Blackrock Mountain dungeon and raid using the exact same art resources as the dozen others already existing, and a raid using the exact same art assets as the dungeon next to it for the first tier.

That's not exactly true.
First off, while both Blackrock Caverns and Blackwing Descent re used some assets from the dungeons they paying homage to, it's not as extreme.

It's not like that every single raid until Cata was that super unique, sure you had Raids like Karazhan, but those were extreme outliners.
Most Classic raids were basically an extended version of some dungeons, MC is a glorified "lava cave" with a single(!) unique model, BWL basically looks just another wing from Blackrock spire.

Small trivia here, T1 & T2 Armor didn't even have unique models until later patches, T2 received a unique skin with the AQ patch, about 6 months after BWL release.

The only really unique raid in Classic was Naxx, which was promptly re used in Wotlk.
TBC also had raids like SSC or TK, which were basically a larger version of their respective 5man dungeons.
Hjyal is a raid based on an unused Classic zone with some Classic Assets, even the one unique model in there (Archimonde) is largely based on the Malchezaar model.

In Wotlk, the just skipped designing a new raid (in terms of assets) twice, first they re used Naxx from Classic, then they built a single room for a raid and a dungeon (ToC).

For the second tier we got a small raid using all the same art assets from the questing area they'd made, and the other half of the tier was cut.

I think a lot of time to set up unique raid enviroments was eaten up by the world revamp, which took up a lot of time of 3D artists.
And to be fair, Well of Eternity is above average for a 5man dungeon in terms of art.

In their own words "Mere thousands saw Kil'jaeden. Millions saw Deathwing."

SWP has been cobbled together with Silvermoon Assets and a few unique creature (by that, i mean 4) models.

The truth simply is, while fewer people saw these raids, Blizzard also put less resources into them and the encounter design team had less things to worry about.
Because it just had a single difficulty alongside a fixed raidsize, nowadays they need to take four difficulties alongside raidsizes ranging from 10 to 30 into account.

If anything, LFR was a massive panic move by Blizzard because the casual raiding audience they've attracted during Wotlk just hit a brick wall during early Cata and left.

[Kolvarg]

Do you see problem in this part? I'll hint you: you played not because there was "a lot of to do" (content), which mea-a-ans... what? What do you think in this case was determining factor (even if it’s just personal to you), better gameplay or content?

So... what's more important in particular case?

People often don’t know themselves what they want, they just feel dissatisfaction, this is what happened. Actually, task of good psychologist is almost always to highlight point in discussion from which it all began, but in this case these are gameplay flaws, and there were a lot of them, as I already said. Lack of content was too obvious and that exactly "patients" loudly announced on the forums, but that was "far from the only problem". You liked it? wonderful! I’m not going to devalue someone’s personal opinion or experience, but in general this is rather special case.

I'm not sure what's the point you're trying to make, honestly.

I played because there was stuff to do. If I was only raid logging, it wouldn't have been the expansion I was most active in.
The things that I got myself busy with were normal WoW things that are pretty much always available. I did daily quests, dungeons, worked on Challenge Modes, achievements, PvP, worked on crafting and farming resources through the garrison.

The thing here is that I did all that stuff because I didn't care that it was not rewarding - the main reason why most other people did not consider most of those things "content".


To be quite honest, in this case, what was more important compared to other expansions was that 1) I had just recently started playing retail WoW on the last MoP patch after years not playing and had just formed a new group of friends to raid and play with, so I was freshly hyped, not burnt out/tired of WoW, and had many friends to play with on a daily basis; and 2) I was unemployed between launch and about patch 6.2 - which was my most active period.

Or in other words: Subjective reasons completely unrelated with specific gameplay or content issues (which I believe is the vastly more likely case for someone unsubbing, especially those who join at the start of an expansion).

[Alkizon]

The thing here is that I did all that stuff because I didn't care that it was not rewarding - the main reason why most other people did not consider most of those things "content".

Because it wasn't content! It was systems parasitic on passed content. Repeating systems that are designed to be elements of progress (experience, items, reputation, reagents, etc.). These were systems related to organization of gameplay or directly dependent on it. Putting "PvP" with "content" together is generally a complete heresy, since this part almost entirely consists of gameplay (but there is nothing wrong with this, since it doesn't particularly lay claim for own separate place here, in content part), with exception of couple NPCs, sets of textures that are already available outside it, and progress system (which was also organized wrong even if we take just PvP separately), which also, incidentally, refers to gameplay systems.

but the same can be said/done for any version of WoW.

Exactly! as we are discussing general priority issues now. It couldn't be otherwise, but the whole point is not in availability of these systems, but in their organization... in organization of gameplay! In methods, in "tools" used by devs, in way of implementation of one or another "common" system... and exactly they will have differences from one expansion to another, especially during periods of abrupt change of course.

Don’t know with what to compare, it's like different microchip with same input and output connectors replaces one on the board, you replaced it and without looking at the fact that system's composition hasn't changed, but output may already have a completely different result (can’t vouch for analogy, it's not my field of activity). Friend used something similar in the sense of "robot with control unit", but old forum died and I have no way to quote something (there was nothing left even in Google’s cache). Oh, found it in "web archive", it's here:
- 23.10.2017 -

Verbal visualization:
Imagine game as large complex robot, system of which can't be remade (these are game engine). All you can do about balance is Control Unit. Control Unit consists of 2 parts (with pinch-bars): 1) general (parameters and characteristics); 2) special (fine tuning for each individual subsystem); 3) they are interdependent. Since it's not possible to change system itself - for convenience, you can add pinch-bars, BUT with each removal of basic ones (which as you know are part of related system) problems will start to experience. What is now is a completely broken panel: 1) there are almost no pinch-bars on general part (strong arms, weak mind), there are electricity spark or RNG placed in place of broken ones; 2) special ones also suffered badly and they are so split that any change leads only to robot's squeal and helpless manipulators swings; 3) now they are trying to break dependencies, as a result of which system will stop working as a single unit (it has long been not working properly, but it'll be even worse).

[Kolvarg]

It was systems parasitic on passed content.

You can twist it any way you want, but the same can be said/done for any version of WoW.

[Osmeric]

That seems more like a player issue then to feel that having multiple levels of content, including some that you can do and enjoy doing, means that you shouldn't bother to try.

You are engaging in a common, but fundamentally flawed, way of looking at things.

The players have absolutely zero responsibility to make anything in the game work. It's the responsibility of the developers to make a game that attracts and retains the players, not the responsibility of the players to change what they are so that they like the game. If the players decide, "no, this isn't doing it for me, bye", their personal preferences override anything you or the developers might have wished them to do instead.

I remember that quote from Ghostcrawler but it always seemed to be in regards to having difficult content as a baseline (see Cata Heroics at launch because "dungeons should be hard" but they were a bit too challenging for average people). Are you really saying that if there were 3 tiers of raiding, people who may still be on the first tier will quit because they aren't on the third, even if they are having a challenge (not "its too hard" I Mean an actual challenge they can overcome) on the first? Again, that sounds like a player issue with perception and "keeping up with the Joneses" although I will say that the WoW community's general elitism and caste system doesn't help (by which I mean the whole "Any guild stuck on X is a scrub guild" sort of mindset)

Absolutely they will. If the game treats players like second or third class citizens, they will not only not be engaged, they will be positively repelled. And this happened in Cataclysm, both in the heroic 5 mans and in the raids.

There's this notion that if only these great unwashed hordes of mediocre players are thrown a bone, they will stupidly be ok with it. That's simply not true, and hasn't ever been true.

[Saltysquidoon]

If anything, LFR was a massive panic move by Blizzard because the casual raiding audience they've attracted during Wotlk just hit a brick wall during early Cata and left.

Based Halfus Guildbreaker being the first boss and harder on 10man. Annihilating "casual raiding guilds" since 2010.

I remember that quote from Ghostcrawler but it always seemed to be in regards to having difficult content as a baseline (see Cata Heroics at launch because "dungeons should be hard" but they were a bit too challenging for average people). Are you really saying that if there were 3 tiers of raiding, people who may still be on the first tier will quit because they aren't on the third, even if they are having a challenge (not "its too hard" I Mean an actual challenge they can overcome) on the first? Again, that sounds like a player issue with perception and "keeping up with the Joneses" although I will say that the WoW community's general elitism and caste system doesn't help (by which I mean the whole "Any guild stuck on X is a scrub guild" sort of mindset)

The bolded section of your quote is absolutely 100% true, it's not even debatable (as in its widely documented as being the case, there may even be blue posts addressing it).
The raiding population has plummeted since the introduction of LFR because the vast majority of new players entering the player pool see LFR is available without having to app to a guild or learn fights or optimise their character, queue up, complete it and never progress to heroic or mythic because they perceive themselves as having seen and completed the content and feel no need to move past the 'first tier'.

[Revamp Man]

No, they want to be able to progress their character without having to do boring ass raids every week. Without some way of progression there really ceases to be any motivation to play. For me personally, if raids are only way to progress my character at a certain point, then I am done. I just find raids to be horribly boring.

Dungeons
Pvp

[Sorrior]

Dungeons
Pvp

Not everyone likes pvp and mythic plus is bullshit compared to the older systems as far as gearing goes(less rng back in the vp days)

[Revamp Man]

Not everyone likes pvp and mythic plus is bullshit compared to the older systems as far as gearing goes(less rng back in the vp days)

Back in VP days the gear was also limited

[Laughingjack]

You are engaging in a common, but fundamentally flawed, way of looking at things.

The players have absolutely zero responsibility to make anything in the game work. It's the responsibility of the developers to make a game that attracts and retains the players, not the responsibility of the players to change what they are so that they like the game. If the players decide, "no, this isn't doing it for me, bye", their personal preferences override anything you or the developers might have wished them to do instead.



Absolutely they will. If the game treats players like second or third class citizens, they will not only not be engaged, they will be positively repelled. And this happened in Cataclysm, both in the heroic 5 mans and in the raids.

There's this notion that if only these great unwashed hordes of mediocre players are thrown a bone, they will stupidly be ok with it. That's simply not true, and hasn't ever been true.

I mean... it kinda was for at least the first quarter of wow. Catering to your worst playerbase has never been shown to attract or keep players for any amount of time. Creating a harsher tier/caste system has.

[Osmeric]

I mean... it kinda was for at least the first quarter of wow. Catering to your worst playerbase has never been shown to attract or keep players for any amount of time. Creating a harsher tier/caste system has.

No, it wasn't. Players were churning out of the game from day 1. It's just that it was masked by the influx of new players to keep the total sub numbers rising.

[Laughingjack]

No, it wasn't. Players were churning out of the game from day 1. It's just that it was masked by the influx of new players to keep the total sub numbers rising.

I rather not just go in the circle of "we don't have the numbers" even when we have the numbers. Look there isn't any proof opening the game up to a larger audience actually increased its audience.