Game Developer's Vision VS Player Feedback - In preparation for Shadowlands

[Big Thanks]

I mean on one hand you're right azerite is a badly designed system generally.

On the other hand though, that's how gear works and has always worked? I can't get glad gear if I never step into arenas, I can't get mythic raid gear if I don't raid, I can't get dungeon pieces if I dont run dungeons.
Like M+ only players would be 'not worthy' of getting a trinket that only dropped off a raid boss (and vice versa).

But this isnt that case is it?

I am doing mythic +7 or +8, just not +10+
I didnt want the best item level gear, i just wanted to "roleplay" or even "min max" with subpar gear.
But only the elite rightfully earned the rights to experiencing the game and we were pretty much spat on.

Fun fact
I was always an azerite lover and farmed several subpar pieces just to have specific azertie traits promoting different playstyles to have fun with.
And as an azerite lover...i was spat on.

You get RANDOM pieces you biatx! The cool kids get SPECIFIC ones.... - Blizzard BfA Tides of Vengeance patch

[Zephire]

But you need to be really really careful if you want to put "min maxers" on a pedestal for your game.

I know how i feel, but i dont know if i can explain.

Min Maxing is an elimination proccess.
Is a proccess to remove everything bad and add everything good.

This goes against concepts like "creativity" and "roleplaying"
This goes in favor of math and optimization.

By the end of this elimination proccess...we have...1 way to play the game.
IF the game has an insanely well made design...it might have more than 1 ways to play at high end.

And whats next?
Should we put on a pedestal World Records next? Which by elemination proccess are going to create 1 way to play the game?
Thats my fear for WoW's future, but this is my agenda supporting Roleplay and Customization over Optimization.

Isn't min/maxing the way of optimization? Which then can be applied to every area, right? You optemize your RP to be as good as it can be, you optimize your time to have the most fun, you optimize your build-idea etc. That's how I see it. Maybe I've misunderstood what min/maxing really is though!

Many times it's we as players who start puting people on pedistals (at least previously, now it's also something done by the publisher to promote their games). I'd place a top end raid guild and it's member on a pedistal, they're very good, I would also put someone RP-ing at a high level on a pedistal.

But this isnt that case is it?

I am doing mythic +7 or +8, just not +10+
I didnt want the best item level gear, i just wanted to "roleplay" or even "min max" with subpar gear.
But only the elite rightfully earned the rights to experiencing the game and we were pretty much spat on.

Fun fact
I was always an azerite lover and farmed several subpar pieces just to have specific azertie traits promoting different playstyles to have fun with.
And as an azerite lover...i was spat on.

You get RANDOM pieces you biatx! The cool kids get SPECIFIC ones.... - Blizzard BfA Tides of Vengeance patch

Why were you spat on? People you don't know? Four other random players that all have a different goal where one might want to do the dungeon in time while the others are ok just completing it?

I also collect a stupid amount of gear with corruption and if I join a group I make sure it's okay that I play a specific way, if not, then I go "main stream". If I play it with my friends though... then they'll just have to deal with me beeing me :P

[Sansnom]

The entire game philosophy, which went from "RPG"' to "convenience-ladden lobby game".

Examples? If you are talking about queuing system, then what you would have prefer? People spamming chat looking for a group? I fail to see how that is better and more "RPG".

[Big Thanks]

@Zephire

I dont know if im the right person to explain "min-maxing" (because of my poor english)

When it comes to its RPG-Games origin i think this posts explains it best:

It means bending your character to unnatural extremes to maximize the efficiency of your character's strengths: squeezing out every stat-point from every weakness to re-allocate it to accentuate character strengths, etc.

For example, in Dungeons and Dragons, there are six stats -- three "physical" (Strength, Dexterity, Agility), and three "intellectual/social" (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma). Normally, a well-rounded character would have fairly moderate stats across the board, but reasonable deficiencies in some areas and strengths in others.

But a min/max player will meta-game the system, and create a character that is abhorrent for roleplay purposes, but extremely capable for statistical/combat purposes. If they have a fighter-type character, they might make intelligence 4 or 6, just to pump up strength to 18 or 20, etc

When it comes to WoW...
I think this part of the quote explains it best:

But a min/max player will meta-game the system, and create a character that is abhorrent for roleplay purposes, but extremely capable for statistical/combat purposes

When it comes to min maxing there is no roleplay whatsoever. The objective is to make your character optimized in every way for combat/clear objective/win game.

[Gaidax]

Then I have a compromise. Keep systems like Covenants out of raids, dungeons and PvP. That way anything remotely competitive isn't locked behind it and being compelled to do it. It becomes like those three followers in Najzatar, and they join you for open world content.

I have a compromise too - let's not.

Amount of people who are genuinely in that horse race for world first are such a small amount, that I totally don't see why everything should dance around them.

The rest of us? It won't even matter. You can clear Heroic, Mythic and M+15 with any covenant, just like now you can do all that with whatever corruptions and not necessarily "teh bestest" ones.

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But this isnt that case is it?

I am doing mythic +7 or +8, just not +10+
I didnt want the best item level gear, i just wanted to "roleplay" or even "min max" with subpar gear.
But only the elite rightfully earned the rights to experiencing the game and we were pretty much spat on.

Fun fact
I was always an azerite lover and farmed several subpar pieces just to have specific azertie traits promoting different playstyles to have fun with.
And as an azerite lover...i was spat on.

You get RANDOM pieces you biatx! The cool kids get SPECIFIC ones.... - Blizzard BfA Tides of Vengeance patch

I mean, if your playing field is low M+ of 10 and lower and that's it, then I'm not terribly sure what's your issue. You don't really intersect with teh "elites" there. Who cares what you do there.

[Big Thanks]

I mean, if your playing field is low M+ of 10 and lower and that's it, then I'm not terribly sure what's your issue. You don't really intersect with teh "elites" there. Who cares what you do there.

I have no idea why they made it that way...

I guess...probably data told them i was the only person alive enjoying specific azerite pieces farm?
Probably I farmed all the ones i wanted and could get specifically.

[Kralljin]

I don't agree with the thesis that tbc offered "alternative paths to progress your character" and even if it did that wasn't the problem.

It's not really a thesis but a fact.
What options did you have in Cata besides heroics after you're done farming normal dungeons?
You could only craft two items, so that was pretty shoddy in comparison to the 5+ craftable items (depending on Class / spec) in TBC.

Next to that, Rep offered more items and they took a bit more time to grind them out in TBC.

I guarantee if the release heroics were turned into "mythics" and not LFDable there would have been almost no outcry.

The issue is that you'd still leave them hanging with nothing to progress after normal dungeons.

That's kinda the problem, everybody is supposed to be playing the "same game" at varying levels of difficulty nowadays, everybody should do dungeons at the difficulty level that suits them, everybody should raid at a difficulty that suits them and so forth.

Previously, more casual players simply didn't have to raid because content below raiding offered more ways to progress your character.
Blizzard could get away with having one difficulty because the content below raiding (and by extension heroics) offered enough to keep people busy.

[Saltysquidoon]

Previously, more casual players simply didn't have to raid because content below raiding offered more ways to progress your character.
Blizzard could get away with having one difficulty because the content below raiding (and by extension heroics) offered enough to keep people busy.

I mean you're right in the sense that during TBC the delineation between tiers of content was fuzzier (with crafted and rep gear being desirable) so people who didn't or could do heroics could access more desirable loot and the game, on the whole, was slower.

I still disagree that the 'alternate paths' were the driving issue behind the cata debacle (rep and crafted gear till existed and provided progression (even preraid bis, even if it was a more defined capacity), the issue was LFD.
In TBC and vanilla (and early wrath) if you didn't want to or couldn't make the effort to join groups or a guild to get carried. There was no expectation that you should clear content because you had to make an effort to see the content.

[Kralljin]

I still disagree that the 'alternate paths' were the driving issue behind the cata debacle (rep and crafted gear till existed and provided progression (even preraid bis, even if it was a more defined capacity), the issue was LFD.

It was an issue, which i mentioned earlier, but the problem still remained that even if you removed LFD, you'd still leave those people with nothing to progress beyond normal dungeons.
So what else they should do? There would be nothing left other than going into heroics.

(rep and crafted gear till existed and provided progression (even preraid bis, even if it was a more defined capacity)

You cannot compare the two craftable epics of Cata onto the same level as TBC craftables.

TBC took way more gold / time to farm and on top of that, some classes over 5 craftable epic items, it was already a small milestone to even get your profession up to 375 before you could even craft those.
And those Rep took far more time to grind out, because you just couldn't equip a tabard and get rep in every dungeon, you were far more restricted.

[Akka]

Examples? If you are talking about queuing system, then what you would have prefer? People spamming chat looking for a group? I fail to see how that is better and more "RPG".

This failure to see beyond the most superficial level is pretty common, which is precisely the whole point of the thread.

[arkanon]

Im just going to leave here one example of Blizzard putting min maxers on a pedestal in WoW.
"Making specific azerite pieces only possible to get for people who do +10+ Mythic Dungeons and leaving noobs to rot with random pieces"

Can you provide a source for that quote?

Secondly, i did a +12 on a random toon i hadnt played in weeks, with welfare 410 gear, no gems, no enchants, and 1 essence. oh, and a 370 weapon.

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But this isnt that case is it?

I am doing mythic +7 or +8, just not +10+
I didnt want the best item level gear, i just wanted to "roleplay" or even "min max" with subpar gear.
But only the elite rightfully earned the rights to experiencing the game and we were pretty much spat on.

Fun fact
I was always an azerite lover and farmed several subpar pieces just to have specific azertie traits promoting different playstyles to have fun with.
And as an azerite lover...i was spat on.

You get RANDOM pieces you biatx! The cool kids get SPECIFIC ones.... - Blizzard BfA Tides of Vengeance patch

Oh dear. You have spent weeks waging a war against min/maxers, how they ruin the game and are the worst thing ever. And then go on to say the following "i just wanted to "roleplay" or even "min max"

At this point you are just a low skill player screaming and yelling that its not fair that players better than you have access to things you dont. This is entitlement, and i believe the comment linked shows this - admitting you actually like to min/max yourself, meaning your problem isnt with min/maxing at all, but rather better players doing things you wish you could.

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[MENTION=591333]


When it comes to min maxing there is no roleplay whatsoever. The objective is to make your character optimized in every way for combat/clear objective/win game.

The fact you think preparing and building a character for the sake of completing an objective has "no roleplay whatsoever" tells me the root of this issue is you genuinely have absolutely ZERO clue what an RPG is, or what roleplaying is.

[Big Thanks]

@arkanon

Your posts make me so confused...you give them wayyyy too much credit...im a nobody arguing for the sake of arguing because is fun to CLASH ideas and learn new things.
What i like is watching many people telling me several different things and perspectives.

Even though i admit...a lot of the times i DONT change opinions.

But if you followed me on the covenant thread since the start...you should know i changed opinion from:
supporter, hater, supporter, hater, supported.

I ended up with supporter...so i CAN change ideas depending on what you guys tell me all the time...

[arkanon]

@arkanon

Your posts make me so confused...you give them wayyyy too much credit...im a nobody arguing for the sake of arguing because is fun to CLASH ideas and learn new things.
What i like is watching many people telling me several different things and perspectives.

Even though i admit...a lot of the times i DONT change opinions.

But if you followed me on the covenant thread since the start...you should know i changed opinion from:
supporter, hater, supporter, hater, supported.

I ended up with supporter...so i CAN change ideas depending on what you guys tell me all the time...

As usual, you fail to respond to any points raised, and instead use this site as your personal blog.

[Doffen]

It doesnt stop the fact min maxing is an elimination proccess in order to optimize.
Yes, is a creative proccess to get there, involving math and science...but the end result...the end result creates a Player-created-Boss you cant defeat if you also dont optimize yourself.

Im just going to leave here one example of Blizzard putting min maxers on a pedestal in WoW.
"Making specific azerite pieces only possible to get for people who do +10+ Mythic Dungeons and leaving noobs to rot with random pieces"

I was deemed "not worthy" of trying different PvE builds with specific azerite traits by Blizzard...because apparently i dont "need" them.

Can't remember if it was different in 8.1 compared to 8.3.

But, mythic+ has ladders or gear just like crafting, raids and Arena has. If you do only 8s as an example you get the level of Azerite Pieces(465) that are meant for that difficulty, aka 3 affixes and the amount of Titan Residuum that you get reflects that. If you do below 7 you get TR that is meant for buying 450 Azerite pieces. It works the same in Arena just to make an example for the content you are familiar with. If your skill equals you ending at 1650 rating you will get 465 Azerite in the chest, if you get to 1300 you get a 445/450 piece. Same goes for raiding and crafting. If you do only normal raids you get the mats to make a 440 piece if you got crafting profession, in the same amount of bosses as another player do heroic so he can craft a 455 piece.

So you get the same traits as those who do 15s just at lesser item level. Or you can of course wait until get enough for a random 480, just as long as someone doing lets say a 12 to buy a spesific one for 20k TR.

The game rewards you for the difficulty you do. It's just that simple.

[Big Thanks]

Can't remember if it was different in 8.1 compared to 8.3.

But, mythic+ has ladders or gear just like crafting, raids and Arena has. If you do only 8s as an example you get the level of Azerite Pieces(465) that are meant for that difficulty, aka 3 affixes and the amount of Titan Residuum that you get reflects that. If you do below 7 you get TR that is meant for buying 450 Azerite pieces. It works the same in Arena just to make an example for the content you are familiar with. If your skill equals you ending at 1650 rating you will get 465 Azerite in the chest, if you get to 1300 you get a 445/450 piece. Same goes for raiding and crafting. If you do only normal raids you get the mats to make a 440 piece if you got crafting profession, in the same amount of bosses as another player do heroic so he can craft a 455 piece.

So you get the same traits as those who do 15s just at lesser item level. Or you can of course wait until get enough for a random 480, just as long as someone doing lets say a 12 to buy a spesific one for 20k TR.

The game rewards you for the difficulty you do. It's just that simple.

I was not looking for item level I was looking for specific azerite pieces.

But im probably the only person on planet earth who enjoys azerite pieces and wants to farm specific ones...probably

[Belloc]

When devs make the game that players ask for, the game suffers because players don't actually know what makes a game fun -- they just know which parts of it they've enjoyed.

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I was not looking for item level I was looking for specific azerite pieces.

But im probably the only person on planet earth who enjoys azerite pieces and wants to farm specific ones...probably

I rather enjoyed azerite gear on my prot paladin. I would like it even more if they had more interesting choices.

[Doffen]

I was not looking for item level I was looking for specific azerite pieces.

But im probably the only person on planet earth who enjoys azerite pieces and wants to farm specific ones...probably

Yeah, thats only for the 20k TR. But you can get it by doing just 8 or 9s too. But it takes a lot longer then because you don't do the "required" content to get it faster. And the game should work this way. The harder content you do the better rewards. Even though you do 15s each week it takes 8 weeks to get one. Kinda silly.

Would be nice that you could target your best piece for the lower item levels too, I get that.

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I rather enjoyed azerite gear on my prot paladin. I would like it even more if they had more interesting choices.

Yeah, that's my biggest issue with Azerite Armor. It just isn't interesting enough.

[Razion]

Catch 22: Sometimes average is better than worse, but if you never go for the glory you can't get the best possible results.

Sometimes, it can be tiring. As a player I'll sometimes think, "I wish they just wouldn't change these certain things, when they were already good enough, so that they didn't get ruined and become a lot worse." (Specs, Classes.) Often I'll think adding new things that are radical is fine - they can always just not make more of that, then, when it doesn't work out. (Islands, Warfronts, Torghast.) But ruining something that is already good in the hope of making it better - players often refer to this as "change for the sake of change". Why dedicate time to fixing what isn't broken? As the video explains, putting your focus into smoothing out the roughest edges is important. So when an edge that isn't rough gets addressed incorrectly, it can be a mistake in evaluating what actually was important and what actually needs addressing vs, again that often referred to vocal minority.

[Jastall]

I remember the outcry to wotlk heroics being too easy as well lol

Dev meeting probably went like this:

Community manager: “We are hearing that players miss a harder, more RPG-like, dungeon crawl.”
Defensive Dev: “Well we thought a faster, easier, action-oriented gameplay would be more fun”
Sarcastic Dev: “LOL the Wrath babies would get rekt in a proper dungeon crawl”
Logical Dev: “Well technically the Wrath babies never got to experience anything else. The game has gotten so big that there will be a lot of different view points, but we should at least listen to our core audience an see if all the new players can adapt to more challenging gameplay”

After poor reception of Cata dungeons:

CEO: “Our core audience is no longer hardcore tabletop rpg nerds, but the millions of new gamers that started playing for the social experience. Don’t fuck up again”

Their core audience was never hardcore tabletop RPG nerds, as if that were a uniform group and not a collection of sub-groups that hate each other for playing games wrong. WoW didn't completely destroy every other MMO on the market by catering to their demographic, it did so by making the game tons more casual than stuff like Everquest that calls you a big crying baby if you dare want to level to max solo, absorbing tons of casual players that only did leveling/dungeons in Classic, and Heroics/Kara in TBC. But that could only last for so long, the devs couldn't possibly keep on going with the TBC situation where their flagship group content kept being consumed by a single-digit percent of the playerbase, if that.

Wrath then gave these players access to all the game's content, more or less. The issue was them imagining that they needed to switch back in the other direction with the Cata Heroics and 10 man that is as hard as 25 man. When your car is going 120 MPH in a direction and you believe you went too far, you slowly brake then reverse/turn back, you don't attempt to do a 180 all of a sudden.

If anything I think Blizzard's tendency to do said 180s every expansion, in no small part due to their poor response to player feedback, is what hurts the game the most. See their attempt to hardcorize the game in Cata, or WoD's gross overreaction to having too many things to do in early Mists.

[TorAndre]

What specific system in WoW suffered due to player feedback instead of sticking to a developer's vision?

LFR, Titanforging, RNG on top of RNG, Tauren Priests. Stat templates in pvp.

All result of player feedback.