New major problem with current direction of development

[Ishayu]

This is a super simple and intuitive, though not immediately obvious, problem.

It's called the egg timer problem by the vanilla developer team whenever they talk about it publically.

The idea is that you must perform a certain activity within a real-world time, aka you can set an egg-timer for it. (In the original incarnation of this problem it was 20 minutes, but now it's much more - yet the problem is still the same)
The game will not reward you at all beyond this activity if you play more in that game type, and then it resets after the time is up.

If you fail to complete the activity, you will permanently fall behind because everybody else will have the same number of resets as you + the ones you missed.
If you manage to complete it, the game will subtly tell you to stop playing and come back later if you like rewards, which is obviously not fun.

Blizzard's solution to these problems is to completely and utterly overwhelm us with more activities than we can possibly do, so everybody kindda falls behind, and then reward us with catch-up whenever we miss something.

They did this in BfA, they're doing in Shadowlands, although in Shadowlands there's very little character power hidden behind these daily activities, and that solves most of the problem. Yet still, there is some. So it's better this time around, but it's not fixed.

One of the original goals of World of Warcraft was that you could just log in and play. There was no limit at which it'd say "Alright, that's it m8, no more rewards" and you could have a fulfilling experience whether you wanted to play for 5 minutes or 10 hours. It did give you some subtle wind at your back if you don't played for a while though, but nothing like what we see today.

The game was fundamentally designed to be fun for you no matter what level you were at. There was no need to be at the end-game.

In tBC they did implement dailies but made them completely optional. Only mounts and transmogs. BfA was not like this - BfA was awful.

The problem is dailies. There's simultaneously too many and too few and it really doesn't matter how many Blizzard put into the game.
The solution to this problem is to just delete them and let me play whenever I want. Provide structure, sure, provide objectives, sure, but stop rewarding me with quests that run out but reset every day. It's addictive in the most awful way.

[CaptainV]

Is this primarily a flying whine thread?

Because this game has more difficulty settings than ever.

15 dungeon difficulty levels (and more for fun) ontop of the base normal, heroic, and mythic-0
4 raid difficulties
8 Torghast layers plus twisted corridors

It has everything from braindead simple to face melting hard.

Also, what are you talking about with BFA's "no catchup model?" It had tons of catchup. Catchup has been around in earnest since the IoQ patch in TBC when they made a new 5 man and new badge gear equal or better than T5. The players want it.

There is a fundamental problem with the "take your time" approach which is that it doesnt really invite much reason to actually stay when you're basically waiting for the next big drop of content.

In TBC, in WOTLK, rep grinds were entirley at your pace, not the games, you wanted to get to exalted you put on a tabard and got farming in WOTLK, or in TBC you farmed X dungeon until you were maxed out.

If you wanted to do just dailies that was fine, but it also offered people the choice of playing at their pace, not the games.

Paced progression was more of a MoP onwards thing when MoP literally forced you to grind reps at the launch to get geared enough to do raids, a very unwelcome change that was altered to make it plausable to bypass rep grinding entirley.

As for difficulties...imma be blunt.

Id rather have 4 raids than 4 raid difficulties, id rather have 4 raids with various tiers of difficulty in how each one is executed, from the earlier tier raids being forgiving to the harder ones being more brutal.

The introduction of mythic raiding has actually done more damage than good for raiding, aswell as LFR.

Normal/Heroic was fine back in WOTLK, it offered the perfect balance of casual progression vs challenge progression, where heroic was actually difficult especially Ulduar and later ICC, granted, Ulduar had a hard-mode as opposed to heroic difficulty but the point stands that it was basically a challenge content.

The issue with the new difficulty, and the issue with the system that its impliamented with, is that it ruins the point of having a big expansive world with "Lots" of content, by focusing on one new raid per patch and very little content to enjoy at launch.

WOTLK was perfect for why a launch needs lots of content to start with, you had heroic dungeons, you had Naxx 10-25, you had Malygos 10-25 you had Obsidian Sanctum, 10-25 you had the PvP Raid, 10-25.

You had daily quests for casuals, tabards and rep farms for hardcores, you had rated pvp and world pvp and wintergrasp was amazing at launch.

At launch, WOTLK had the best launch content of any expansion simply because there was no shortage of content to actually *do*.

And like it or not, 4 tiers of raid, 15 tiers of dungeon, that are the same raid, and dungeon, will never give you the sheer quantity of content that WOTLK gave.

[Steelangel]

players unsub because game is not rewarding.

removal TF was a grave mistake

nerf of itlv of m+ was nail to the coffin

nerf to raid drops cemented the failure

revert all those mistake and people will return

Considering that I've not seen any apparent drop in the number of people running around my covenant HQ compared to day 1 of the expansion, I'm not sure if "people leaving" is a serious problem. Titanforging was garbage. M+ shouldn't give better than raid gear. Drop rate nerf is kind of crap, but ehh, I can choose what upgrade to get form the vault which balances it out.

I haven't left, because the new systems are a definite improvement. YMMV, but I'm sure that more people agree with it being an improvement.

- - - Updated - - -

And like it or not, 4 tiers of raid, 15 tiers of dungeon, that are the same raid, and dungeon, will never give you the sheer quantity of content that WOTLK gave.

Quantity != Quality

Naxx was rehashed from Vanilla with new numbers.
Obsidian Sanctum and Malygos were basically instanced world bosses with trash mobs.

You have daily quests and rep farms NOW.

The only thing SL is missing is a new battleground, but given what shite seething shore is, I'm not sure if I want a new one.

[Greyfang]

What can I do wrong? Both weeklies completed. Covenant chapter completed. Even world boss is dead. Torghast quests don't give me renown. Callings refuse to give me any renown. Only 1 of 3 initial ones granted it, while on my first alt all 3 gave me renown. I don't do dungeons for renown, because it's ineffective waste of time. Queues are long and even more RNG is involved there. And LFR isn't even possible, because it requires 170ilvl.

Hey OP, just so you know, there is a "known" bug with Renown catch up. When you complete the 2 weeklies for renown (1000 anima and rescue souls in the maw), the game seems to think you're "caught up" for the week, and stops offering you additional renown, even if your clearly not caught up. How I was able to solve it is, upon reset, when you're offered the 1000 anima quest and rescue souls quests, DO NOT TURN THEM IN. Keep farming renown with callings/dungeons/campaign until youre fully caught up (or you're missing 2 renown to be fully caught up), then turn those in. Just make sure you turn them in after all the other renown is farmed and youre caught up. Worked for me every time in alts.

[SoloMmofriendly]

What Blizzard want: to make players play right here and right now, i.e. sub and play current content, not be unsubbed

Catch-ups: players unsub, because they know, that they can resub at any moment later and catch up immediately - Blizzard are sad

No catch-ups: players unsub, because they burn-out due to trying to keep up to "do it now or you'd fall behind forever" concept - Blizzard are sad

Real reason: players unsub, because game isn't fun

Example: In SL we have renown catch-ups. Waiting 2 months to complete Covenant campaign and another 2 months to get to renown cap - isn't fun. It would be much better to resub after 4 months and get everything non-gated. And it would be even better to resub when 9.1 will arrive and start working towards getting flying immediately. Or, if flying will be gated behind, let's say, 100th renown level - to wait for another X months and then get everything immediately.

And it rises several major questions:
1) Is such World of Waitcraft game even worth playing?
2) Was BFAs "play right here and right now" no catch-up model effective or too many players unsubbed due to not being able to keep up to it?
3) What is effective solution of this problem?
4) May be Blizzard should stop gating "fun" from players and they'll keep playing this game and being subbed then?

I mean, it's not catch-up vs no catch-up question, that causes this problem. It's lack of fun, that is caused by all that gating. So, if players play fun game and don't play unfun, then may be we should simply stop gating that fun from them? If players want flying - give them flying. If players want game to be easier - make it easier. Not entire game, but at least part of it. Why this concept of OPTIONAL casual/hardcore, easy/hard, comfortable/challenging content is so hard to understand, that we still don't have any solution of this problem after 16 years of development? Why it's so hard to understand, that trying to FORCE players to play certain content certain "intended" way - is COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE?

I find it incredibly ironic that you are here complaining about the game that is FULLY catered to the casuals, you cant be a casul, as in you play quite a lot but you dont really care and then moan the games too easy too boring and empty of content when blizzard do exactly what you asked, cater to everyone, what you dont realise is there are people even more casual than you, and blizzard caters to all, like you asked, then you realise oh snap, games not fun when its this easy and this empty.

Blizzard is accommadating the absolute turd pile at the bottom of the skill ladder which is leaving everyone including average casuals bored and underwhelmed with meaningless content.

Player a) happily playing the game thats quite challenging
player b) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too

*blizzard nerfs and simplifies to accommadate player b

Player a quits because the game is no longer meaningul, player b moves into position 1 and along comes player c) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too.

And it repeats over and over and over untill all your left with are the bottom of the barrel players.

I said all along accommadating casuals is a bad idea, just giving handouts of everything what are they working for? they arent working for shit, just waiting for the next handout, hows that fun?

You got what you asked for mate. all of you did, a meaningless game that is just one big happy grind for free meaningless gear, but hey, at least you can run around pretending your good for a short while with the boosted class and free gear blizzard gave you.

casuals suck, casuals destroyed the game. not even kidding, they are FULLY responsible for the state of the game now, crying because the hardcore player worked hard so is stronger in game now EVERYTHING is spoonfed to you.

[NineSpine]

I find it incredibly ironic that you are here complaining about the game that is FULLY catered to the casuals, you cant be a casul, as in you play quite a lot but you dont really care and then moan the games too easy too boring and empty of content when blizzard do exactly what you asked, cater to everyone, what you dont realise is there are people even more casual than you, and blizzard caters to all, like you asked, then you realise oh snap, games not fun when its this easy and this empty.

Blizzard is accommadating the absolute turd pile at the bottom of the skill ladder which is leaving everyone including average casuals bored and underwhelmed with meaningless content.

Player a) happily playing the game thats quite challenging
player b) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too

*blizzard nerfs and simplifies to accommadate player b

Player a quits because the game is no longer meaningul, player b moves into position 1 and along comes player c) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too.

And it repeats over and over and over untill all your left with are the bottom of the barrel players.

I said all along accommadating casuals is a bad idea, just giving handouts of everything what are they working for? they arent working for shit, just waiting for the next handout, hows that fun?

You got what you asked for mate. all of you did, a meaningless game that is just one big happy grind for free meaningless gear, but hey, at least you can run around pretending your good for a short while with the boosted class and free gear blizzard gave you.

casuals suck, casuals destroyed the game. not even kidding, they are FULLY responsible for the state of the game now, crying because the hardcore player worked hard so is stronger in game now EVERYTHING is spoonfed to you.

The problem with your argument is that you've conflated "easy content to do" and "casual". Those aren't the same thing. The amount of chores in the game right now is not casual friendly. More "easy" content does not make the game casual friendly.

The logical pretzels you guys twist yourself into to convince yourselves that endless bloated systems, huge numbers of chores, and a gear wall that sets in very shortly after reaching max level is "casual friendly" is absurd.

- - - Updated - - -

Considering that I've not seen any apparent drop in the number of people running around my covenant HQ compared to day 1 of the expansion, I'm not sure if "people leaving" is a serious problem. Titanforging was garbage. M+ shouldn't give better than raid gear. Drop rate nerf is kind of crap, but ehh, I can choose what upgrade to get form the vault which balances it out.

I haven't left, because the new systems are a definite improvement. YMMV, but I'm sure that more people agree with it being an improvement.

- - - Updated - - -



Quantity != Quality

Naxx was rehashed from Vanilla with new numbers.
Obsidian Sanctum and Malygos were basically instanced world bosses with trash mobs.

You have daily quests and rep farms NOW.

The only thing SL is missing is a new battleground, but given what shite seething shore is, I'm not sure if I want a new one.

WoTLK launched with 12 dungeons and added 4 more. Pretending that raid bosses are just world bosses because it is convenient for your argument is boring and dishonest.

[Declaron]

The issue is that the character progression is completely non existent. I assure you I could (and have) stopped playing now and I can come back in 6 weeks and not feel even slightly “behind” which begs the question, what have YOU achieved in the 6 weeks that someone not playing has not achieved. 15 Renown? Stygia? Anima? Gear? Lmfao.

Also the gearing situation is the worst it has ever been ever by absolutely miles.

At some point the game went from “there is so much content I have no idea where I’m gonna find the time to do x or y” to “you don’t have to do anything anymore, it’s all completely optional, and if you don’t do anything you can always catch up later” which when coupled with everyone basically having the same gear means to me at least there is no point in playing whatsoever.

[MrFawlty]

I find it incredibly ironic that you are here complaining about the game that is FULLY catered to the casuals, you cant be a casul, as in you play quite a lot but you dont really care and then moan the games too easy too boring and empty of content when blizzard do exactly what you asked, cater to everyone, what you dont realise is there are people even more casual than you, and blizzard caters to all, like you asked, then you realise oh snap, games not fun when its this easy and this empty.

Blizzard is accommadating the absolute turd pile at the bottom of the skill ladder which is leaving everyone including average casuals bored and underwhelmed with meaningless content.

Player a) happily playing the game thats quite challenging
player b) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too

*blizzard nerfs and simplifies to accommadate player b

Player a quits because the game is no longer meaningul, player b moves into position 1 and along comes player c) its too hard, i dont have enough time, please make it so i can play too.

And it repeats over and over and over untill all your left with are the bottom of the barrel players.

I said all along accommadating casuals is a bad idea, just giving handouts of everything what are they working for? they arent working for shit, just waiting for the next handout, hows that fun?

You got what you asked for mate. all of you did, a meaningless game that is just one big happy grind for free meaningless gear, but hey, at least you can run around pretending your good for a short while with the boosted class and free gear blizzard gave you.

casuals suck, casuals destroyed the game. not even kidding, they are FULLY responsible for the state of the game now, crying because the hardcore player worked hard so is stronger in game now EVERYTHING is spoonfed to you.

Excellant post. All shared content is now aimed at the lowest common denominator.

[anon5123]

>Wowisdead64 thread
>5+ pages of replies
you'd think at some point people would recognize this guy is trolling

[Steelangel]

WoTLK launched with 12 dungeons and added 4 more. Pretending that raid bosses are just world bosses because it is convenient for your argument is boring and dishonest.

Again, quality over quantity.

And a single-boss "raid" is akin to an instanced world boss with trash. #sorrynotsorry. You could put Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum and Onyxia's lair together and
only then compete with Terrace of the Endless spring for "smallest raid".

[NineSpine]

Again, quality over quantity.

And a single-boss "raid" is akin to an instanced world boss with trash. #sorrynotsorry. You could put Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum and Onyxia's lair together and
only then compete with Terrace of the Endless spring for "smallest raid".

The dungeons of WOTLK were excellent. Have you ever actually worked in game development? The main resources that go into level design, for something like a dungeon, are art assets (including the level construction itself). Things like encounter design are a minimal part of the investment. There's virtually no difference between the volume of unique art assets in the average WotLK dungeon versus the average shadowlands dungeon.

What do you think was actually traded off here? Can you actually substantiate the difference, rather than appealing to vague notions of quality versus quantity? Just saying "I like shadowlands dungeons better" doesn't show that they actually required more resources to develop each one.

A single boss raid is not akin to an instanced world boss. Instanced world bosses barely have mechanics. Instanced world bosses in this expansion don't even have loot tables. They're just big mobs with lots of health that drop anima.

[Kiivar86]

WOTLK was perfect for why a launch needs lots of content to start with, you had heroic dungeons, you had Naxx 10-25, you had Malygos 10-25 you had Obsidian Sanctum, 10-25 you had the PvP Raid, 10-25.

You realize the reason why they had that much is due to the largest raid being a literal copy/paste, right? The other raids were one boss raids. Wow-whee.

The dungeons of WOTLK were excellent.

The Oculus, excellent? The dungeon they had to bribe people to run?

[NineSpine]

You realize the reason why they had that much is due to the largest raid being a literal copy/paste, right? The other raids were one boss raids. Wow-whee.



The Oculus, excellent? The dungeon they had to bribe people to run?

Excellent on average. Happy?

[GreenJesus]

This catch up dilemma is why I don't play alts until later in expansion. I can just wait for later when all the catch up are in place and steps get simplified, flying is in, and alot less total time spent than staying caught up week by week

[Wheeler]

The game was at its peak when there was 1 difficulty mode across all content. Naxx was Naxx. MC was MC. BWL was BWL. Hyjal was Hyjal. BT was BT. Sunwell was Sunwell. Players were united in their ability to talk about the game with each other, and even if your guild sucked at the time and you were only 2 bosses deep into Naxx, you were still doing the exact same instance as other players. The playerbase was in that way, united - even while separated by skill gaps.

Good players would make that content much, much easier - and the speed at which they cleared it was the metric by which they were judged. The amount of gear they could amass in raids was their reward for being skilled enough and coordinated enough to clear it early, and clear it regularly. Having 15 weeks of full clears vs 2 weeks of full clears is a lot of additional loot for your raid group. Combine that with attendance/loyalty based loot systems, and you have some players that invested their time walking around decked out in gear. It was the very definition of rewarding.

Now? You have players separated into FAR too many difficulty modes of content. LFR, Normal, Heroic, and then Mythic raids. Normal, Heroic, Mythic 0, and Mythic+ (Sub-10's, 10-15's, and the 15+ alpha group). Metas to deal with in all of this. The reward is now the ability to clear the content, not the speed at which you do so.

This game started its very noticeable downward trend when they started fracturing their playerbase into multiple difficulty modes of content. They've now got content that's great for 20k or so people, and very exclusionary to the rest. "Go do heroic/normal" isn't exactly a solution when the difficulty looks like this:

LFR---Normal--[---Heroic----------(where heroic SHOULD be)------------]--------Mythic

And most of the playerbase is likely somewhere between the bracketed lines.

TLDR: 2 modes of raid content (Normal and Heroic), with Normal remaining how it is, and Heroic being just a little bit harder than current. Yes, this is a "dumbing down" of content for 3-5% of the overall playerbase. Sorry. Obviously, none of this will ever come to pass. The game is what it is now. M+ isn't going anywhere. The moment that everyone wants to point to that "ruined wow" or made it so different than it used to be? This is it. It already happened. It was a gradual fracturing of the playerbase with an oversaturation of difficulty modes over the last 10 years.

[huth]

The game was at its peak when there was 1 difficulty mode across all content. Naxx was Naxx. MC was MC. BWL was BWL. Hyjal was Hyjal. BT was BT. Sunwell was Sunwell.

WotLK didn't have multiple difficulty modes? That's not how i remember it. For that matter, all of those raids would barely qualify for modern Heroic, if that. You're also forgetting that BC introduced Heroic dungeons.

Additionally, you're making the classic mistake of equating correlation and causation. There's no hints anywhere that the multiple difficulties have anything to do with the decline.

[Wheeler]

WotLK didn't have multiple difficulty modes? That's not how i remember it. For that matter, all of those raids would barely qualify for modern Heroic, if that. You're also forgetting that BC introduced Heroic dungeons.

Additionally, you're making the classic mistake of equating correlation and causation. There's no hints anywhere that the multiple difficulties have anything to do with the decline.

It had Normal and Heroic.

And that's my point - where those dungeons would be now wouldn't matter. If anything - it speaks more to my point that they're wasting all these resources, and giving themselves ILVL bloat due to multiple raid modes that exist only to give 20k challenge-seekers some unnecessary bragging rights. I love the RTWF too, but I'd rather all that die for the game to be healthy again for everyone.

I'm aware it's a very hot take. It's my opinion as to why the game has been on a downward spiral ever since. People come back hoping for a return to form, but that return to form can never exist with a fractured playerbase like this.

[huth]

It had Normal and Heroic.

And that's my point - where those dungeons would be now wouldn't matter. If anything - it speaks more to my point that they're wasting all these resources, and giving themselves ILVL bloat due to multiple raid modes that exist only to give 20k challenge-seekers some unnecessary bragging rights. I love the RTWF too, but I'd rather all that die for the game to be healthy again for everyone.

I'm aware it's a very hot take. It's my opinion as to why the game has been on a downward spiral ever since. People come back hoping for a return to form, but that return to form can never exist with a fractured playerbase like this.

Waste resources? It's pretty much the opposite. Making more difficulties is extremely cheap on resources compared to the extra audience you can reach that way.

And WotLK had 4 difficulties starting with Trial at the latest, depending on how you count Ulduar.

[Wheeler]

Waste resources? It's pretty much the opposite. Making more difficulties is extremely cheap on resources compared to the extra audience you can reach that way.

And WotLK had 4 difficulties starting with Trial at the latest, depending on how you count Ulduar.

You're counting 10 man Normal and 10 man heroic as multiple difficulties? They were tuned poorly, but Normal and Heroic were the difficulties.

As for "Extremely cheap on resources", they've struggled with Ilvl bloat for multiple expansions now. Multiple squishes. There's a reason for that. (It's because they put a 15 item level gap between gear, and then spread that gear out over multiple modes). You have 2 sets of Ilvls per tier it would take you almost two expansions to reach the same level of bloat they're reaching in 1.

As for "Extra audience", CE has at most been achieved by 8ish% of the playerbase with Xavius, with 25-35% getting AOTC. There's a 12-26% population gap in there that either cannot complete Mythic, or doesn't want to bother, or both. In other words, it's a significant minority.

[Orwell7]

Waste resources? It's pretty much the opposite. Making more difficulties is extremely cheap on resources compared to the extra audience you can reach that way.

And WotLK had 4 difficulties starting with Trial at the latest, depending on how you count Ulduar.

Yeah, but we cannot compare those things in a vacuum.

See, multiple difficulties necessarily need more item level brackets. In Wotlk however (starting with ToC), we had 3 tiers of loot for 4 difficulties. 10hc dropped the same ilvl as 25normal. Only 25 heroic was above - just like mythic now.

I'd be glad if LFR+Normal were merged somehow, just to counter item inflation.
Also wotlk had a shitload of non-raid content to participate in - they are called 5-man dungeons, which awarded justice points AND valor, to gear alts. Most people did that and maybe some pvp and never set foot in a raid! They had a sense of progression, only by doing 5-mans.. and then maybe some raid with friends.. The game was more "playful" back then.

Now we have LFR so MAYBE those people who don't want to raid try it? Yes, good idea, let them have an utterly miserable few hours!...

Raiding should be something true to it's core. LFR is not raiding, plain and simple. Raiding is not just a few randoms thrown into a pit with a monster. Well, it should be more. And that "plus" is the magic - that you have accomplished something with your fellow adventurers. Like, human interaction, celebrating together, etc..