Legion was designed to make good players help bad players.

[Depakote]

I don't know. I hated Legion as it was when all this borrowed power and Mythic+ bullshit began. I'd give anything to go back to the days of WoD where challenge modes still existed as those were more fun than Mythic+ could ever hope to be.

[Kaver]

Nah. WF/TFing compelling players to do content they normally wouldn't was a failed experiment. You might have preferred it but Blizzard's developers are tired of the entitlement that are inherent to these kinds of systems.

Did you actually read the thread mate

1) I didn't say anything about WF/TFing.

2) I never said that I preferred anything.

3) I was only summarizing how Legion was designed back in the day. Because I think it's an interesting contrast to SL. But I'm not saying anything was good or bad.

4) No opinion was stated other than saying I dislike the boosting meta.

[Couchpotato2013]

Fortunately for me I consider myself bad. Even if I happen to be good in whatever. That way I always room to grow, and for the people who derive their existence by being good in WoW and are aggressive, they have no sticking points when debating me.

[Hellobolis]

it wasn't just legion that did that, though legion did it by far the most/best.

i think such systems are good, as long as the incentive for the geared players doesn't compete/conflict with the incentive for poorly geared players.

sometimes these mechanics cause a "i'm only here for x and if i can't have it i'm leaving" situation, that should be avoided.

[Relapses]

Did you actually read the thread mate

1) I didn't say anything about WF/TFing.

2) I never said that I preferred anything.

3) I was only summarizing how Legion was designed back in the day. Because I think it's an interesting contrast to SL. But I'm not saying anything was good or bad.

4) No opinion was stated other than saying I dislike the boosting meta.

The major differrence between the design philosophies of Legion and SL is the existence of WF/TFing. This was not good for the game. Excuse me for cutting through your attempts at feigned pragmatism to address the actual topic you wanted to discuss.

[Kralljin]

Do you have any explanation or sound reasoning for why there shouldn't be? I'd be happy to hear about it.

I've provided one in my very first post.

When you have bad players that frankly do not play very well and drag down the better players, some of those better players will get very vocal about it, which in turn is perceived as "toxicity" by said bad players.

On top of that, you're not even teaching those players to become better, you're basically rewarding others to do the work for them, once those players that carried those leave, the remaining people will struggle to clear any content because they got used to getting carried.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Good players and bad players, the case is rather subjective. Good in a sense of skill or gear? High Rio de Janeiro or being in a top mythic guild? This is all an illusion. There will always a "better one" who will tell you that you suck. I will agree with this: There are no good and bad players, as it's all relative. There are just people having fun playing a game on the level and in the way they are comfortable with. Good in a sense of kindness? Seems like a more interesting thing to discuss.

[Zarvel]

I've provided one in my very first post.

When you have bad players that frankly do not play very well and drag down the better players, some of those better players will get very vocal about it, which in turn is perceived as "toxicity" by said bad players.

On top of that, you're not even teaching those players to become better, you're basically rewarding others to do the work for them, once those players that carried those leave, the remaining people will struggle to clear any content because they got used to getting carried.

That is a very condescending way to look at things, and frankly gives away quite clearly where you stand on the whole subject in terms of your bias.
How do you learn to do anything in life? Does everyone figure everything out the basics in everyday life by trialing things randomly? Do you educate yourself by getting practical experience right from the get go?
I'll answer those for you - No.
For education we refer to books, which is information gathered and collated into 1 place by people who actually did the work. So when you eventually get a job placement because of the education from books, do you now say you're rewarding those students/graduates for the work others did for them? I'll answer this for you too - No.
Ever since I've played wow, since back in late TBC, my best source of learning the nuances of the game came from playing with better players in my groups. Sure, I may have been shit performance wise in said groups, hell, i'm sure I was shit - but I know this, I definitely learned from those experiences, and it made things a lot easier and clearer for me from there. Best example of this was me transitioning from being a clicker to someone who uses keybinds. I was usually the #1 or #2 dps on my dk/warrior in wrath in all the raids while clicking, so I never felt the need to learn keybinding. Then, this one random warrior dude handed my ass to me in PvP, repeatedly. When I was in the same BGs as him, I'd shadow him to see why he was so good, then, he reached out to me himself and told me i'd keep losing to him as long as I keyboard turned. Thanks to playing with and against that warrior, today I'm playing with keybinds like most good players in the game.
If I was only among people of my skill level, I would probably still be clicking to some extent until this day because I'd probably never experience something that would be a teaching experience.
Of course, this applies to many things, keystone dungeon strats and performance included.

This "toxicity" you keep mentioning is actually quite apt to the idea/opinion you're presenting, and you shouldn't be that surprised that others look at it that way. You're not helping your case with such ideals and worldview. If you feel the need to resort to harsh words the moment you face some sort of adversity, then the problem lies with you my friend.

[Kralljin]

That is a very condescending way to look at things, and frankly gives away quite clearly where you stand on the whole subject in terms of your bias.

No, it's not, it's experience and frankly also supported by the game itself.

Why do you think Blizzard has massively moved away from automated queueing systems?
Because they are a terrible place for a learning experience, as people with very different expectations and ambition are suddenly thrown into the same group and those naturally clash with each other.

Somebody that just wants a chill run will not get along with a guy who wants to speed through a dungeon, neither play the game "wrong", but won't have any fun when they are in the same group.

How do you learn to do anything in life? Does everyone figure everything out the basics in everyday life by trialing things randomly? Do you educate yourself by getting practical experience right from the get go?

The very concept of learning requires two things
1. A person willing to learn (which a bad player is not necessarily willing)
2. A person willing to teach (which a good player is also not necessarily willing)

The Mythic raider does not necessarily join a group to teach others, an LFR raider does not necessarily join a group to learn from others, because this is not the premise of any content outside of a tutorial / mentor system.

You shouldn't expect people do to more than what the content requires from them.

For education we refer to books

This is already the fundamental mistake you are making, stop assuming that people in video games are willing to learn or teach.

This "toxicity" you keep mentioning is actually quite apt to the idea/opinion you're presenting, and you shouldn't be that surprised that others look at it that way. You're not helping your case with such ideals and worldview. If you feel the need to resort to harsh words the moment you face some sort of adversity, then the problem lies with you my friend.

No, that's just the way it is.
Somebody who just wants to get their daily heroic done on their 5th alt isn't going to be very open minded towards a person that turns suddenly adds another 10 minutes to the run because they don't know how things work.

If somebody wants to improve themselves as a player, there exists a plethora of outlets to do so, there is a very good reason why Meta slavery is a huge topic of discussion in almost every branch of gaming, because the information is nowadays so easily accessible to improve yourself.

[Echocho]

Shadowlands is designed to make bad players quit.

[Razion]

They basically said as much when they said it would help players have reasons to help with things like lower keys. This was part of the point of AP in the first place beyond just giving people something to always do, it was a way to keep content always relevant so you always got at least some progress out of it. This wasn't a secret or anything, they told us all this when the content was being announced and why they believed the systems were improvements.

[Depakote]

Shadowlands is designed to make bad players quit.

Shadowlands is designed to make people who like fun quit.

[Couchpotato2013]

Shadowlands is designed to make bad players quit.

All stick no carrot. Bfa rank 4 essences were loads more fun than this crap.

[Resheph]

This is an extremely misguided and kind of silly reply. Every "game" with a state of failure or success will by definition have "good" and "bad" players. Your choosing to ignore this with a false equivalency of enjoyment of a "bad" player vs enjoyment of a good player doesn't delete those facts.

Whether OPs game design hypothesis is correct is in no way refuted by your reply, you're just being rude, and making a fool of yourself.

It is clear you have a very warped view of the world in general and gaming in particular. I hope that when you grow up, if you do, you look back at posts like this and feel the cringe.

[GreenJesus]

It's a terrible idea.

"good" and "bad" players should each go their own way in the game, because when they overlap, it breeds toxicity to an insane degree unless Blizzard timegates the shit out of it like Warfronts (you know people would have attempted to rush the endboss if Blizzard didn't implement any hard barriers).

Good players start to shit on the bad players, bad players get mad at good players because of it and so forth.

Disregarding that designing content around the very concept that a player has not to improve themselves but simply rely on the help of better players is not good.

I still remember the days of (late) Wotlk daily heroics, where a fresh player might end up with some Heroic raider that's just in there for the two Emblems.

Short story of mine, i played a Tank alt in late Wotlk and ended up in Nexus Heroic with a ICC 25man Heroic Resto Shaman that literally just wrote "go go go" and refused to stand still even for a moment and pulled packs by himself if i fell behind.
I didn't care, altough it was an Alt with terrible gear, i could keep up and complete the dungeon super fast because said Shaman could just outheal any damage i took.

Any fresh / bad player would have absolutely crumbled in that scenario.

Because no one would ever bring a "bad" player to a Heroic / Mythic raid just because they want to be nice and carry them through the run and hand them rewards.

Even in the examples provided, the gist isn't that people want to help others, they want the rewards from the activity - and once anything goes south, drama will ensue.

Boosting exists because too many players have too much gold (you're free to theorize where that gold comes from) and because they can't be arsed to play the game in its intended fashion, meaning to improve yourself to tackle higher difficulties.

In MoP I would queue heroic dungeon as ret with righteous fury on for tank and would basically solo it. I would get my valor points and extra goody bag for queuing tank and the others would get a free run.

[shise]

Legion is not that long ago, it is in the same pack as BfA and Shadowlands, but it was much better tho. The systems were not that ridiculously complex as in BfA with endless grinds to be able to actually perform fine. It was good that players were mixed indeed.

[Grax]

It's a terrible idea.

"good" and "bad" players should each go their own way in the game, because when they overlap, it breeds toxicity to an insane degree unless Blizzard timegates the shit out of it like Warfronts (you know people would have attempted to rush the endboss if Blizzard didn't implement any hard barriers).

Good players start to shit on the bad players, bad players get mad at good players because of it and so forth.

Disregarding that designing content around the very concept that a player has not to improve themselves but simply rely on the help of better players is not good.

I still remember the days of (late) Wotlk daily heroics, where a fresh player might end up with some Heroic raider that's just in there for the two Emblems.

Short story of mine, i played a Tank alt in late Wotlk and ended up in Nexus Heroic with a ICC 25man Heroic Resto Shaman that literally just wrote "go go go" and refused to stand still even for a moment and pulled packs by himself if i fell behind.
I didn't care, altough it was an Alt with terrible gear, i could keep up and complete the dungeon super fast because said Shaman could just outheal any damage i took.

Any fresh / bad player would have absolutely crumbled in that scenario.

Because no one would ever bring a "bad" player to a Heroic / Mythic raid just because they want to be nice and carry them through the run and hand them rewards.

Even in the examples provided, the gist isn't that people want to help others, they want the rewards from the activity - and once anything goes south, drama will ensue.

Boosting exists because too many players have too much gold (you're free to theorize where that gold comes from) and because they can't be arsed to play the game in its intended fashion, meaning to improve yourself to tackle higher difficulties.

The game is far more "toxic" now than it has been at any time since November 23, 2004.

[msdos]

I think I liked Legion a lot better when I was under the guise that everything they'd implement we'd move forward with in a stunning fashion.

That never happened. Everything got worse and more watered down and half baked and most importantly, more random.

Even the lauded, amazing, miraculous "Just play the game" great vault is completely random LOL.

[potis]

That is a very condescending way to look at things, and frankly gives away quite clearly where you stand on the whole subject in terms of your bias.

Why is the truth, bias? I have the exact problem with my best friend and a few others that we have been playing for 16 years or so.

He used to care about his performance up to MoP, he was never awesome, but he was never considered bad.

And then LFR mechanics appeared and freebie weekly quests, and insane amount of gold cause of WoD and boosts, and leeching on alts, fully on AFKing, etc etc, and years after his mentality has changed, he never tries to get better, prefers to complain about non-existent problems.

Its always the lack of weapon, the class, its always something at fault but himself.

I told him and them multiple times, my friendship isnt affected by the game and how you play, but i am not gonna be helping you anymore if you guys dont start at least bothering to do basic things, because its clear you are expecting to leech like its some boost group.

They have gotten used to leeching/being carried either by LFR mentality and myself helping them all these years, that i stopped helping them and they are stuck at 200 ilvl on all alts now.

[Alroxas]

most importantly, more random.

Uh... In Legion (specifically at the start of Legion) how exactly did you get your Legion legendary? Was it not a RANDOM drop?

Compared that to SL legendaries where the game literally tells you where to get said recipe and since legendaries can be crafted in 2 spots, gives player agency on where they want their legendary. Moreover, since legendaries have crafted components, professions actually mattered in helping provide crafting mats to make said legendary. Granted you could also just buy mats from AH but you didn't have that agency in Legion until much later.