New major problem with current direction of development

[Dhrizzle]

Not this much though. Shadowlands has reached the peak for this design philosophy, as many tasks are designed as tedious as possible - the infamous "only one mailbox in Oribos" is the best and most hilarious example for that. What the hell is the point to have just one mailbox in a hub city? What could be the intention behind this except making it as uncomfortable for players as possible? It's about the little nuisances that just add up to this experience. It's nothing so big that it instantly drives you away (maybe the loot situation in Shadowlands, but even that might not), it's just little pesky things that add up and get you... exhausted

Y'know I never looked at the single mailbox and thought it was a deliberate attempt to annoy me, in fact after the first few minutes I stopped caring because Oribos is so conveniently laid out in a circle. If you want to know what annoying is like try leveling engineering in Vanilla. The trainers don't even have an anvil near them and Ironforge laid out like a city, not a super-convenient video game hub.

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By the way:

“World of Warcraft player numbers fell back to normal levels as the excitement around November’s Shadowlands expansion subsided. From November to January, revenue fell by 61% and user numbers declined by 41% (these figures do not include China). This roughly matches the pattern seen for the past several expansions, though Shadowlands had a bigger launch. Blizzard does appear to have found a way to increase how often expansions are able to boost earnings. The publisher recently announced that it will be adding the 2007 Burning Crusade expansion into World of Warcraft: Classic this year. Alternating between releasing all-new and classic expansions could cause WoW revenue to spike annually for the near future, instead of every two years (the typical development time for the title’s expansions).”

Investor talk vs. reality. This is clearly one of the main problems caused by the current direction of development (that took over this game since Ion is responsible for it). And therefore it makes sense to have 1 year of retail and 1 year of classic to disguise the shortcomings of retail.

https://massivelyop.com/2021/02/24/s...t-shadowlands/

I disagree with your conclusions as the "cyclical" subscribers have been an issue since 2010 (Cata) with Ion only really taking the reigns from 2016. What's really interesting though is either Superdata isn't that reliable or that article is accusing Activision-Blizzard of defrauding investors.

[WowIsDead64]

This expansion is amazing for players who want to stay casual and not touch raids or mythic dungeons. Just doing covenant stuff gets you a decent set of armour and a weapon which is more than enough to go through Torghast and get your legendaries sorted. A little bit of LFR gets rings and trinket and you're laughing.

Dunno. From what I constantly hear here, I start to feel, that playing at least M+ is mandatory to be successful in this game. Because M+ is one big valve, that opens access to large amount of rewards. It opens access to much better gear, so I no longer would need any other sources, like WQs. It trivializes outdoor content, so even rares/elites wouldn't require groups. It opens access to Vault, i.e. extra rewards. It will open access to Valor rewards. New dungeons are M+ only. I just feel, that if I don't do it - then I gimp myself too much, because I have to deal with content, that has too low reward/effort ratio, like grinding stupid cosmetics, that aren't worth that 10 badly designed WQs/day grind.

[Nite92]

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?

What are you talking about. This expansion is so diverse, you can do whatever an be fine. The issue is that people want to "minmaxed". You can only do m+ and easily reach +15 keys and higher. You can only PvP and achieve 2.1/2.4k. You can only raid and achieve CE. ALL content is optional, only our desire to be "optimal" drives us to do more.
Just look at classic, exactly the same happens. People having to farmed PreBis for days, for MC. 100s of gold for consumes to clear MC clear. Hours of getting wbuffs each week. This is not enforced in classic, you don't even get a reward from doing so. People do it because they want their character to be strongest, and people will find ways to abuse the most casual friendly game in ways nobody thought possible.

[Dhrizzle]

Dunno. From what I constantly hear here, I start to feel, that playing at least M+ is mandatory to be successful in this game. Because M+ is one big valve, that opens access to large amount of rewards. It opens access to much better gear, so I no longer would need any other sources, like WQs. It trivializes outdoor content, so even rares/elites wouldn't require groups. It opens access to Vault, i.e. extra rewards. It will open access to Valor rewards. New dungeons are M+ only. I just feel, that if I don't do it - then I gimp myself too much, because I have to deal with content, that has too low reward/effort ratio, like grinding stupid cosmetics, that aren't worth that 10 badly designed WQs/day grind.

Well that sounds like you want to do it, personally I'm not bothered and am quite happy pottering around in Covenant gear.

[Nite92]

Dunno. From what I constantly hear here, I start to feel, that playing at least M+ is mandatory to be successful in this game. Because M+ is one big valve, that opens access to large amount of rewards. It opens access to much better gear, so I no longer would need any other sources, like WQs. It trivializes outdoor content, so even rares/elites wouldn't require groups. It opens access to Vault, i.e. extra rewards. It will open access to Valor rewards. New dungeons are M+ only. I just feel, that if I don't do it - then I gimp myself too much, because I have to deal with content, that has too low reward/effort ratio, like grinding stupid cosmetics, that aren't worth that 10 badly designed WQs/day grind.

Do you even play this game?

A player that only raids, should obviously be behind a guy who does raids,pvp and m+. How much is the question. But currently it is certainly possible to do anything reasonably well, by ONLY doing this content.

[WowIsDead64]

What are you talking about. This expansion is so diverse, you can do whatever an be fine. The issue is that people want to "minmaxed". You can only do m+ and easily reach +15 keys and higher. You can only PvP and achieve 2.1/2.4k. You can only raid and achieve CE. ALL content is optional, only our desire to be "optimal" drives us to do more.
Just look at classic, exactly the same happens. People having to farmed PreBis for days, for MC. 100s of gold for consumes to clear MC clear. Hours of getting wbuffs each week. This is not enforced in classic, you don't even get a reward from doing so. People do it because they want their character to be strongest, and people will find ways to abuse the most casual friendly game in ways nobody thought possible.

No. I'm actually anti-optional. I don't care about gear beyond ability to do content with certain degree of comfort. For me only cosmetic rewards matter, because it's only thing, that I will be able to carry with me to future content. What I find out - it that game is more difficult for players like me, that counters whole logic of linear increase of difficulty. In this game it's actually easier, when you play harder content. And this is lose-lose situation for me.

[Dhrizzle]

No. I'm actually anti-optional. I don't care about gear beyond ability to do content with certain degree of comfort. For me only cosmetic rewards matter, because it's only thing, that I will be able to carry with me to future content. What I find out - it that game is more difficult for players like me, that counters whole logic of linear increase of difficulty. In this game it's actually easier, when you play harder content. And this is lose-lose situation for me.

Just gearing through LFR and Covenant gear gives more than enough power for grinding cosmetics.

[Nite92]

No. I'm actually anti-optional. I don't care about gear beyond ability to do content with certain degree of comfort. For me only cosmetic rewards matter, because it's only thing, that I will be able to carry with me to future content. What I find out - it that game is more difficult for players like me, that counters whole logic of linear increase of difficulty. In this game it's actually easier, when you play harder content. And this is lose-lose situation for me.

That is way more nuanced than you make it seem.
The game gets easier with gear, which has always been the case, and if you are only after cosmetics, you proably don't do more than normal raids, m0 for transmog and the rest would be open world stuff. Am I correct with that assumption?
In this case yes, you can argue the mythic raider has an easier time than I do in normal raids. Wanting to have a similarly easy time is quite narcissistic imo. The guy put in 100s of hours to maximize his character, which you couldnt be bothered to do.
What you can always do is find chill people to do easy content with. I don't see an issue with that.

[WowIsDead64]

That is way more nuanced than you make it seem.
The game gets easier with gear, which has always been the case, and if you are only after cosmetics, you proably don't do more than normal raids, m0 for transmog and the rest would be open world stuff. Am I correct with that assumption?
In this case yes, you can argue the mythic raider has an easier time than I do in normal raids. Wanting to have a similarly easy time is quite narcissistic imo. The guy put in 100s of hours to maximize his character, which you couldnt be bothered to do.
What you can always do is find chill people to do easy content with. I don't see an issue with that.

What I try to say, that if I limit myself to only having such crappy rewards, as covenant gear, then it shouldn't be "challenging" for me. It's ok for M+ to be more challenging. It's ok for raids to be more challenging. But all this "We want world to feel dangerous" - is complete BS. And all this "You need to put hours, weeks and months of effort to get what? Cosmetic recolored transmog sets?" - is even bigger BS.

[Elkfingers]

Lmao what is this. You do realise that drawing a bell curve on paint and adding completely nonsensical labels to the axes does nothing to bolster your argument, right?

This means nothing. Is this how you think statistical analysis works? I have included a graph below which explains how your brain actually thinks evidence works.

[Raisei]

Dunno. From what I constantly hear here, I start to feel, that playing at least M+ is mandatory to be successful in this game. Because M+ is one big valve, that opens access to large amount of rewards. It opens access to much better gear, so I no longer would need any other sources, like WQs. It trivializes outdoor content, so even rares/elites wouldn't require groups. It opens access to Vault, i.e. extra rewards. It will open access to Valor rewards. New dungeons are M+ only. I just feel, that if I don't do it - then I gimp myself too much, because I have to deal with content, that has too low reward/effort ratio, like grinding stupid cosmetics, that aren't worth that 10 badly designed WQs/day grind.

Doing M+ is mandatory only if you want to take part of the endgame, which as we know, you don't want to do anyway.

So what I am saying is: M+ is mandatory if you want to do M+. Mind. Blown.

What I mean of course is that M+ is needed to gear for higher M+. Progressing through the levels and getting constantly better. And I don't just mean in gear. M+ teaches you things that are non-existant in the open world and only rarely important in Raids. Things like Interrupt rotations, Dispells, Defensive CDs (for DPS and Healers) and various other utilities that are barely scratched usually can make real differences here.
And since things are extremly lethal in keys of 15 and higher you are forced to go beyond just pushing your 3 Button rotation and watch for mechanics to happen.

In short, M+ trains people to become BETTER. It's the perfect mode for people that want to squeeze every last drop of potential out of their classes.

That being said, for the Open World content you need none of that and you need no gear either. Your Covenant set will easily provide enough gear to kill everything in the world except for some stronger rares.

Of course you won't be doing it as fast as a person in 220 gear but that is kinda the point of an MMO like this. The guy in 220 gear has invested time and effort into getting that stuff, you have not. Yes, you are gimped but that is your own choice. The option is there and most people take it. If you refuse to take the option the only person to blame is yourself.

It comes down to the usual point you try to hide behind your "pro-casual" arguments: You want to get the same stuff that people work hours and hours for without having to work for them. You do not want to take part in the endgame, you do not want to grind, you do not want effort, you barely want to play the game at all, but you want the game to give you free 220 gear because you have the grace to log in.

[Nite92]

What I try to say, that if I limit myself to only having such crappy rewards, as covenant gear, then it shouldn't be "challenging" for me. It's ok for M+ to be more challenging. It's ok for raids to be more challenging. But all this "We want world to feel dangerous" - is complete BS. And all this "You need to put hours, weeks and months of effort to get what? Cosmetic recolored transmog sets?" - is even bigger BS.

But the world isnt that bad, I have 5 chars that are above 210 ilvl now, and I've gotten them all through world content between 170 and 200, and it is not as difficult as you make it to be. Also, if WQs are your "endgame content" I'd argue you should not be able to oneshot everything and commit genocide.

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Lmao what is this. You do realise that drawing a bell curve on paint and adding completely nonsensical labels to the axes does nothing to bolster your argument, right?

This means nothing. Is how you think statistical analysis works? I have included a graph below which explains how your brain actually thinks evidence works.

10/10 OG, thanks

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.....

What the fuck is this graph. Yes a m+10 is harder for PUG, than a +15 is to PUG. I agree 100%.
The issue is that the content is not harder you just choose to play with people that are not interested in learning.
You are playing with people that scream at the DPS to do more dmg because the wiped on PF 2nd boss, after dying to the explosion. But don't realize that the purple add reduces dmg taken of mobs by 75% in close proximity.

Content is not hard, just because people cba watching a 5 minute video about a dungeon.

[Raisei]

What I try to say, that if I limit myself to only having such crappy rewards, as covenant gear, then it shouldn't be "challenging" for me. It's ok for M+ to be more challenging. It's ok for raids to be more challenging. But all this "We want world to feel dangerous" - is complete BS. And all this "You need to put hours, weeks and months of effort to get what? Cosmetic recolored transmog sets?" - is even bigger BS.

But it is not challenging. At all. The Open World is easily doable for everyone. I really do not know where you feel challenged by trash mobs. Are you sure you even know how your classes work? Like at least a basic understanding of their rotation? Do you know how there are different mob levels from normals to champions and rares and that Blizzard usually includes some mechanic in WQ so that champions can be killed easier? Honest questions, because I cannot get my head wrapped around where outdoor content is challenging.

Even the Maw as the Endgame zone is designed to be easily doable with 190+ gear, except for the group quests and big champions and rares of course. The former are designated as such and have an automatic button to get a group for it, the latter you avoid.

[Tiradon]

I would do M+0, because Mythics are resurrection of that old pre LFD dungeons. They've appeared, because Blizzard really think, that LFD killed dungeons, while it actually revived them, cuz they were almost dead at moment, when LFD was released. Problem is - they wanted to sit on two chairs, i.e. prolong dungeons' life time, so they implemented timers and "infinite" difficulty ladder there. But this thing is what actually ruins Mythics for me. First of all I hate time runs. Back in old WotLK days I was doing dungeons for fun, not challenge. It was that "skip everything and get badges from last boss ASAP" crowd, that ruined dungeons and turned them into time runs. So, I guess, I would enjoy Mythics, only if I would play them with IRL friends. Yeah, I had IRL friends in this game back in old days. But they're no longer playing and I don't want to find new ones, because I don't want to put social obligations on me. Yeah, I don't want to be obligated to play this game, when I don't want to do it. And I don't want to be obligated to play with friends, when I want to do my own business.

But I agree, that the biggest problem with this game - is that Blizzard don't even try to find ways to solve problems with their game. Their game is way to "railed". They just say, that you have to play "this way" and that's it. You have to agree or quit. There is no room for "We have players with X demands and Y demands, that can contradict each other, so may be we'd implement some mode switch, that would allow us to satisfy them both". Currently it's something like "There is no game outside of M+ and raids", i.e. that old sweet "raid or die". Guys, who do M+ or raids automatically get enough gear and therefore character power to make everything else easy and therefore accessible for them. You do M+ for just 2 hours a day and hurr-durr you now have enough power to complete high Torghast floors. And guys, who do casual content, have to constantly struggle even with this causal content, because Blizzard tend to overtune it exactly to make it suitable for M+ guys. And casual content like Isle Expeditions and Torghast has major problem - you can't progress via this content itself. It always requires other kinds of contented as support.

Here is graph, that explains problem. Yeah, difficulty of some content like M+ increases, but not exponentially, so it's compensated but growth of character power. But not all content has growth of difficulty. Some content is trivialized by this character power. And more power you have - more easy content you can do. This is what is called "slippering from difficulty curve". And casuals have to climb on this difficulty curve first. Not all of them want to do it.

I understand your point, but again a m7+ is all you need for a casual player not chasing the 220-226 ilvl.

[Nyel]

I disagree with your conclusions as the "cyclical" subscribers have been an issue since 2010 (Cata) with Ion only really taking the reigns from 2016. What's really interesting though is either Superdata isn't that reliable or that article is accusing Activision-Blizzard of defrauding investors.

Has nothing to do with fraud, it's much more about wording and marketing bla. The investor talk is fluff, if you look behind their quarterly results you see exactly what Superdata is describing.

And with Ion this whole issue just accelerated. I agree it's been part of the game for a longer time than Ion's the leader, but his design approach was fuel to the fire in that case.

[WowIsDead64]

What the fuck is this graph. Yes a m+10 is harder for PUG, than a +15 is to PUG. I agree 100%.
The issue is that the content is not harder you just choose to play with people that are not interested in learning.
You are playing with people that scream at the DPS to do more dmg because the wiped on PF 2nd boss, after dying to the explosion. But don't realize that the purple add reduces dmg taken of mobs by 75% in close proximity.

Content is not hard, just because people cba watching a 5 minute video about a dungeon.

I don't try to tell, that M+15 is easier, than M+10. I just try to say, that if you do M+15 in gear, that is proper for M+15, then overall on average whole game is easier for you. Including M+10. And that peak, you need to climb on in order to start making whole game easier for you - is M+. Everything below it just way too hard for rewards, it gives. Crappy rewards should be = crappy content.

[Raisei]

I don't try to tell, that M+15 is easier, than M+10. I just try to say, that if you do M+15 in gear, that is proper for M+15, then overall on average whole game is easier for you. Including M+10. And that peak, you need to climb on in order to start making whole game easier for you - is M+. Everything below it just way too hard for rewards, it gives. Crappy rewards should be = crappy content.

What you completely missunderstand is that not everyone wants the game to be easier. People do not push through M+ levels and gear up to make it easier, they do it to make the next higher key possible. And when they beat that key level they keep on pushing until they reach the point where neither their gear nor their skill can keep up with the Dungeons damage/mob health anymore.

People do this because it is fun to challenge yourself and see how high you can go. Gear is a necessity, but it is not the point of the activity, overcoming a challenge is.

[ellieg]

What you completely missunderstand is that not everyone wants the game to be easier. People do not push through M+ levels and gear up to make it easier, they do it to make the next higher key possible. And when they beat that key level they keep on pushing until they reach the point where neither their gear nor their skill can keep up with the Dungeons damage/mob health anymore.

People do this because it is fun to challenge yourself and see how high you can go. Gear is a necessity, but it is not the point of the activity, overcoming a challenge is.

Naw man. Everyone is like him. They do m+15 to get super geared to make farming WQ for anima as easy as possible. The entire game for him is abt gathering cosmetics lol.

[Nite92]

I don't try to tell, that M+15 is easier, than M+10. I just try to say, that if you do M+15 in gear, that is proper for M+15, then overall on average whole game is easier for you. Including M+10. And that peak, you need to climb on in order to start making whole game easier for you - is M+. Everything below it just way too hard for rewards, it gives. Crappy rewards should be = crappy content.

Holy shit, what is this crap?
NO.
Just no.

Yes after doing +15s for one month, getting +15s done is getting easier. But you could just do the same.
Progress from +5s to 15s, do +15s for a month and it is exactly as easy for you. People that are now getting gear, had to work their way up there to achieve this gear.
BTW, m+ is not the be all and end all, and you do not need it.
(Also it was really unfair that people got AQ gear, making MC so easy).

[WowIsDead64]

Overall you can't convince me, that game is ok now. Or you expect me to believe you, resub and do that anima farm? I've been playing game by myself for 2 months and tested whole content, I wanted to test. And I know for sure, that amount of anima isn't enough now, because I farmed catch-up gear on 4 characters and I definitely know, what anima income do we have now. And I know, that leveling is slow and boring without flying. I know, that renown is way too unstable, so I constantly get stuck with nothing more to do on my current character, while back in patch 6.2 I had at least 1 hour of guaranteed content every day without any gaps. And of course that some WQs are just broken and nobody is going to fix them, because who cares about outdoor content? Only M+ and raids really matter in this game.

And I also know, that 9.1 isn't going to bring any new content to me beyond flying in obsoleted content. And I wouldn't even care, but waiting for so long not to get any content at the end? It's better for flying to be enabled right now in patch 9.0.5 then. At least I would be able to play right now. Because when 9.1 will be released - it will be just too late to start playing. And if Blizzard really think, that TBC would bring me back, then they make mistake. TBC is as boring, as Vanilla was. Only WotLK Classic and WOD Classic would bring me back.