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  1. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beatman View Post
    It is better to cater to players that are actually playing the game. The competitive and perma-subbed players are what keeps this game alive. I'd also argue that by now the WoW playerbase consists mostly of this kind of players. Ultra casual players that would progress through heroic dungeons and mythic+0 dungeons are almost non-existant. There is little gain from catering to them.
    And your source is *crickets*
    Quote Originally Posted by trimble View Post
    WoD was the expansion that was targeted at non raiders.

  2. #82
    Stood in the Fire BrintoSFJ's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by potis View Post
    They wouldnt, what you would have is just a very low skilled playerbase since the better players just destroy things and move on, its a reason WoW is still thriving, no other game stays alive long enough to create relevant difficulty or at least engaging for a few weeks/mostly bug free content.

    I am currently experiencing this in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online), the game is so irrelevantly easy, we are talking Normal Dungeon in WoW -1000% difficulty easy, but they went and added DLC dungeons that are like a Normal Dungeon, they arent difficult, they are stupidly easy, but the community is so low skilled that the majority avoids them, afks, leaves and gives up instantly because the increase in difficulty is simply "too much" for them.

    And they arent new players, they cant be new players with 1500 Champion points (their paragon levels), which means they have been playing for awhile.

    Thats what happens when the game is stupidly easy from minute 1, and to majority of its endgame, a community that cant even handle the most basic form of content.
    So basically developers drove down player intelligence? That is just sad.
    Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos was the game that brought me into gaming. I was 17 years old then, I abhorred gaming before this game. From then on, I became a fan of Warcraft and Blizzard. To see it all go down the drain like this is truly sad for me. No king rules forever but at least some of them went down in history as real badasses. I hoped Blizzard and Warcraft would be one of them but it is no longer possible.

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Beatman View Post
    It is better to cater to players that are actually playing the game. The competitive and perma-subbed players are what keeps this game alive. I'd also argue that by now the WoW playerbase consists mostly of this kind of players. Ultra casual players that would progress through heroic dungeons and mythic+0 dungeons are almost non-existant. There is little gain from catering to them.
    Lmao this is so incredibly wrong. The majority of the playerbase are super casual. The competitive players make up like...5% of the game's population, probably. It's why LFR still exists. It justifies Blizzard making raids that aren't 100% phoned in because way more players are actually seeing the raids. Before LFR, the majority of players only saw a raid on Youtube.

  4. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by BrintoSFJ View Post
    So basically developers drove down player intelligence? That is just sad.
    1: that’s not what they said even though that’s what you wanted to hear.

    2: player intelligence didn’t need blizzards help to go down, that happened on its own. But they had two choices, lower the skill required to play and keep the game from tanking or keep the skill required above whatever arbitrary IQ score you deem high enough and watch the game die because it can’t retain the playerbase thanks to the base’s unwillingness to get better.

  5. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Beatman View Post
    I'd also argue that by now the WoW playerbase consists mostly of this kind of players.
    You can argue that if you want but Blizzard themselves have told us that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase are the "ultra casuals".
    While I'm sceptical of Blizzard these days I'd trust their internal data over feelcraft.

  6. #86
    WoW's entire model is built to take advantage of turbo casuals who either forget to unsub and let the sub lapse, or who just play at such a snail's pace to never actually get to anything to benefit the top active 10% of people. It's actually kind of shitty, but to also be fair, they've tried doing all sorts of things to get people to do other stuff, and they've made everything quicker, and it's never worked. Contrary to what a lot of assholes will say, though, I don't think it's entirely just because people are dumb, I think a lot of people just don't like the trappings and staples of the "classic" MMORPG genre (i.e. having to apply to play the game, an active guild to do most everything really meaningful, tons of socialization. I think this is why the genre is in a slump. Most people don't care for this kind of stuff, and other genres stole a lot of the carrot on a stick-y parts of MMORPGs, without all the baggage. I also don't think how classes/specs can radically change pretty often helps either. Blizzard loves their pendulum design shifts.), but somehow got shoehorned into playing it anyways, probably because Blizzard built a game that almost exclusively caters to that mentality.... except at the end of it, where it does an entire reverse of how it plays before then. That's just horrible design, IMHO. If you put a lot of "skill" traps as you leveled, in WoW, earlier on it's life (it wouldn't work now, it's way too late), and forced grouping, and had, like... actually good tutorials built into the game ages ago, the game probably would have lost a lot of people, but the general playerbase would probably be a whole lot more consistent. Or, if that's not what Blizzard wants, they shouldn't fucking design a game who's entire endpoint is based around that, and stop trying to shoehorn everyone into it. The ideal thing would be to have two avenues for those two groups, instead of trying to shoehorn people into doing content they don't want to do. MoP did this, and it worked. Almost every style of play had a path they could follow, and it followed the traditional MMO progression curve to some degree. The only real downside being the lack of dungeons.

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by BrintoSFJ View Post
    So basically developers drove down player intelligence? That is just sad.
    I dont really think its the devs fault, its simply game design, ESO is literally a single player game with MMO features, WoW is literally the opposite.

    People tend to not like accepting that MMORPGs have subgenres and not all are the same therefor they cant be compared.

    But thats what happens when your game design is based around housing and quests and you add dungeons that go from 0 mechanics to 2 mechanics and your community cant even press W for 1.5 seconds to get out of the red circle.

    People seriously dont understand how segregation is a healthy thing for a game, assuming you actually try to find people similar to what you want.
    Last edited by potis; 2021-05-15 at 07:10 AM.

  8. #88
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriani View Post
    But everyone doesn't "get first place" in this scenario. Even in the FFXIV design, competitive players (raiders) get the best gear and get it faster. It's just that the gap between the competitive route and the non-competitive route is very small as far as player power goes. The "trophies" for "first place" in FFXIV tend to be visual rather than power related. The very best of the best players in FFXIV get unique (and visually striking/glowing) weapon skins from the ultimate difficulty encounters not unlike the old challenge mode sets.

    Having every player able to reach similar player power levels, regardless of content, isn't "terrible design" in my opinion. In fact I think it's the better choice to go with if you want to retain the most players. Advancing one's character is a primary motivator to play the game, but that motivation gets cut off quickly if you don't enjoy the content avenues that provide said advancement. Having multiple routes to similar (not necessarily identical) destinations, even if some are slower than others, offers that motivation to far more people by providing multiple ways to similar ends.

    The problem with your "you get what you put in" mentality is that the options of "what" you can put in have been reduced to raid, mythic+, or pvp, and the "what" you get is miles ahead of the alternatives. Gone are the days when you could farm up rare materials to craft exceptional gear to use or sell (instead you either cant craft anything worth using at all, or you need copious amounts of bop mats and/or quest macguffins that requiring raiding before you can make anything), invest time into a long grind that resulted in worthwhile gear, or run dungeons for a currency that allowed you to purchase good gear from a vendor ala the end of TBC and throughout Wrath of the Lich King.

    Nowadays the world content is more of a side note that is hardly worth the time or effort because what it rewards ends up not being much of a reward at all as far as player power is concerned both because by the time you get it, you probably have equal or better, and because there is no advancement past that point unless you are willing and able to do the "big three" (raiding/M+/pvp). Not everyone is willing or able to do that content, but those players still want to advance their characters and Blizzard still wants their money.

    So to keep that influx of cash they need provide motivation for those players as well. Blizzard seems to be recognizing this with allowing world content players to reach 237 ilvl gear vs the 239 that heroic raiders can get. Yes Mythic Raiders will still have a significant edge, but the number of Mythic Raiders is relatively small so the aforementioned world content gear is still a move in the right direction as far as I'm concerned and it does close the power gap somewhat.

    It is a proven and successful design philosophy in FFXIV. Players who don't raid can get player power levels near to those that do... they just have to invest far more time to get it. The people with "skill" get slightly better gear at a significantly faster pace, and the plebs can get gear that's almost as good as theirs, but with a longer time investment. There's also visual differences between the gear, with the Ultimate encounters (I would liken these to Mythic raid bosses) rewarding unique and striking visual indicators of a player's prowess.

    Regardless of the content one enjoys, most players typically want their character to grow stronger. When that threshold of growth is stunted because the content you enjoy and are capable of engaging in has a hard cap. Players lose one of the primary motivators to play and the company loses subs.
    Everything you said here and in your first post is completely right, and exactly why I've moved on to FFXIV after playing WoW since 1.8.

    The most hilarious thing is watching WoW players here scramble like "B-but you can't get the same item level as me by only running LFD and LFR!! You don't deserve it! You don't need it! Why do you want it???" (HINT: I want it because big numbers feel good, as I happen to be a human being), and yet I've been hard pressed to find ANYONE in FFXIV complain that dirty casual solo scrubs like me can get a gear level 1 point removed from Mythic raiders at the end of a raid tier.

    Because my progression does not affect them. They still have the mounts, the titles, the shiny weapon bling. It's just that my only-queued-content ass gets to catch up to them. And let me tell you, this fact makes for some interesting DPS recounts sometimes...

  9. #89
    Stood in the Fire BrintoSFJ's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mardux View Post
    1: that’s not what they said even though that’s what you wanted to hear.

    2: player intelligence didn’t need blizzards help to go down, that happened on its own. But they had two choices, lower the skill required to play and keep the game from tanking or keep the skill required above whatever arbitrary IQ score you deem high enough and watch the game die because it can’t retain the playerbase thanks to the base’s unwillingness to get better.
    Quote Originally Posted by potis View Post
    I dont really think its the devs fault, its simply game design, ESO is literally a single player game with MMO features, WoW is literally the opposite.

    People tend to not like accepting that MMORPGs have subgenres and not all are the same therefor they cant be compared.

    But thats what happens when your game design is based around housing and quests and you add dungeons that go from 0 mechanics to 2 mechanics and your community cant even press W for 1.5 seconds to get out of the red circle.

    People seriously dont understand how segregation is a healthy thing for a game, assuming you actually try to find people similar to what you want.
    I think I should have added /sarcasm at the end of my post....
    Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos was the game that brought me into gaming. I was 17 years old then, I abhorred gaming before this game. From then on, I became a fan of Warcraft and Blizzard. To see it all go down the drain like this is truly sad for me. No king rules forever but at least some of them went down in history as real badasses. I hoped Blizzard and Warcraft would be one of them but it is no longer possible.

  10. #90
    Quote Originally Posted by Rappy28 View Post
    Everything you said here and in your first post is completely right, and exactly why I've moved on to FFXIV after playing WoW since 1.8.

    The most hilarious thing is watching WoW players here scramble like "B-but you can't get the same item level as me by only running LFD and LFR!! You don't deserve it! You don't need it! Why do you want it???" (HINT: I want it because big numbers feel good, as I happen to be a human being), and yet I've been hard pressed to find ANYONE in FFXIV complain that dirty casual solo scrubs like me can get a gear level 1 point removed from Mythic raiders at the end of a raid tier.

    Because my progression does not affect them. They still have the mounts, the titles, the shiny weapon bling. It's just that my only-queued-content ass gets to catch up to them. And let me tell you, this fact makes for some interesting DPS recounts sometimes...
    No one cares about what gear level you get, no one, maybe the immature 20 year "mythuc raidurs" but the majority of the decent players do not care what happens outside of their bubble of players.

    You guys simply dont understand statistics, maybe you, personally wont affect the instanced content but many others will, and thats the problem.

    For every 10 of you getting freebie gear, there will be at least 4-5 out of those 10, in the life of the expansion that will attempt content out of their skill level just because they have the gear, and thats the problem.

    You guys simply dont understand how WoW is all about the enjoying the instanced content when they are relevant, just because you take forever to do what others do in a few hours, you think that somehow thats the correct way to do things.

    Why do you want 225 ilvl? Whats gonna change? You know whats gonna change? You will try to start a raid with others like yourself, fail miserably at everything and complain about something else now that you have the gear.

    Literally the same way, pugs in Vanilla in 2005 couldnt get past the first two molten destroyers in MC, when you were supposed to be clearing AQ40/Naxx.
    Last edited by potis; 2021-05-15 at 12:10 PM.

  11. #91
    Quote Originally Posted by Mafic View Post
    MMORPGs always had some element of competition. But the key was that cooperation was always more valuable. I think BlizZard has lost sight of this. Vanilla raiding wasn't really difficult but it was more of a cooperative experience.

    Current raiding scene is hyper focused competition because of the many mechanics.
    I think you’re on the right track with this. Today, we have numerous convenient systems that group players together to down content efficiently, therefore, bypassing the social and competitive ways to find like minded players who were interested in progressing through various forms of content. It didn’t become this way overnight. It’s been gradual, and back in earlier expansions before LFR, LFD and guild finder, etc, it required social interaction to seek out players to do content. This was even satisfying enough for the casual players, and it didn’t matter as much to them that they didn’t get to raid in places like Naxramas, Black Temple, Sunwell - you get the idea. People in leading edge guilds didn’t care about casuals, and casuals didn’t feel ignored by the top end guilds. Every guild usually had something to progress towards in socially cooperative ways without these modern convenient systems we have today.

    TLDR; Social interaction in earlier expansions of the game was a form of content in itself, creating meaningful and fulfilling experiences that drove players to want to do more challenging content. Today’s group finders dilute the player experience and have helped to polarize casual players from competitive players.

  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by Crimson Spears View Post
    No but certainly you can give them things to work for no?

    For people who struggle through normal dungeons completing heroics would be a meaningful personal achievement to them no?

    Why then does their seem to be this expectation to over gear them to the point it is painfully clear they didn't overcome anything but simply out geared it?
    If you are above the minimum required age and you actually play the game you wont struggle with normal, hc og mythic dungeons. This issue doesnt exist

  13. #93
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    Those who are telling me how I am wrong, claiming that the playerbase at the end of a patch's live consists mostly of casual players doing low difficulty content. Take a look around Oribos and your covenant sanctum. There are mostly 38k+ HP characters, consisting of HC and mythic raiders, key stone masters and 2k+ PvP players. When you see somebody with ~25k hp it's most likely someone's alt. Most casuals have cancelled their sub ~1-2 months ago.
    Last edited by Beatman; 2021-05-15 at 01:42 PM.

  14. #94
    Quote Originally Posted by potis View Post
    No one cares about what gear level you get, no one, maybe the immature 20 year "mythuc raidurs" but the majority of the decent players do not care what happens outside of their bubble of players.

    You guys simply dont understand statistics, maybe you, personally wont affect the instanced content but many others will, and thats the problem.

    For every 10 of you getting freebie gear, there will be at least 4-5 out of those 10, in the life of the expansion that will attempt content out of their skill level just because they have the gear, and thats the problem.

    You guys simply dont understand how WoW is all about the enjoying the instanced content when they are relevant, just because you take forever to do what others do in a few hours, you think that somehow thats the correct way to do things.

    Why do you want 225 ilvl? Whats gonna change? You know whats gonna change? You will try to start a raid with others like yourself, fail miserably at everything and complain about something else now that you have the gear.

    Literally the same way, pugs in Vanilla in 2005 couldnt get past the first two molten destroyers in MC, when you were supposed to be clearing AQ40/Naxx.
    Sooo having more people try end game and being able to do it is a bad thing becaaaause?

  15. #95
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriani View Post
    But everyone doesn't "get first place" in this scenario. Even in the FFXIV design, competitive players (raiders) get the best gear and get it faster. It's just that the gap between the competitive route and the non-competitive route is very small as far as player power goes.
    It's two different routes that both lead to the same place really. Do you want your gear fast or do you want it easy? Both are equally okay in my book as long as it keeps players happy and subscribed, you never see a raider in FFXIV complaining that a casual got the same gear as them after a few months.

    For me personally I think it's easier to just do the raids. Grinding out matchmade dungeons, trials and raids for months is just too much effort for me.

  16. #96
    Quote Originally Posted by ClassicPeon View Post
    If you are above the minimum required age and you actually play the game you wont struggle with normal, hc og mythic dungeons. This issue doesnt exist
    Interesting. So you are saying the concerns of players less skilled then yourself do no warrant attention?

  17. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by Rappy28 View Post
    The most hilarious thing is watching WoW players here scramble like "B-but you can't get the same item level as me by only running LFD and LFR!! You don't deserve it! You don't need it! Why do you want it???" (HINT: I want it because big numbers feel good, as I happen to be a human being), and yet I've been hard pressed to find ANYONE in FFXIV complain that dirty casual solo scrubs like me can get a gear level 1 point removed from Mythic raiders at the end of a raid tier.
    You don't have to explain at all. All that matters is that you want it, and will stop playing if you aren't given it. End of story, nothing else need be said or justified.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  18. #98
    Quote Originally Posted by potis View Post
    I dont really think its the devs fault, its simply game design, ESO is literally a single player game with MMO features, WoW is literally the opposite.

    People tend to not like accepting that MMORPGs have subgenres and not all are the same therefor they cant be compared.

    But thats what happens when your game design is based around housing and quests and you add dungeons that go from 0 mechanics to 2 mechanics and your community cant even press W for 1.5 seconds to get out of the red circle.

    People seriously dont understand how segregation is a healthy thing for a game, assuming you actually try to find people similar to what you want.
    pretty much the same thing in swtor fwiw. You can get basically everything by solo farming easy flashpoints, albeit a bit slower than raiders, and I imagine participation is insanely low.

  19. #99
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    You don't have to explain at all. All that matters is that you want it, and will stop playing if you aren't given it. End of story, nothing else need be said or justified.
    The developers are at the point where they could literally scale content or the players themselves so that nobody actually needed the gear , in fact they do this to test on the ptr and did it for pvp content for a couple of expansions. Of course participation plummeted and I think they're cognizant enough to recognize how much not having a gear reward sucks. Once you recognize this it becomes very clear that they have quite an apparent disdain for most people who play this game.
    The hammer comes down:
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
    And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

  20. #100
    Quote Originally Posted by Crimson Spears View Post
    Interesting. So you are saying the concerns of players less skilled then yourself do no warrant attention?
    What players? i am saying these people do not exist

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