Community: Less about Fantasy more about numbers and performance

[erifwodahs]

I find that hard to believe but I'll take your word for it. Let me put it this way, I've never played a popular multiplayer game with the types of differences I've talked about where a "meta" didn't eventually emerge. The level of toxicity was different, depending on the game, but "lol N00bZ" has been a thing in every multiplayer game I've ever experienced, especially as you move into upper middle/lower upper levels of performance.

There are meters in FF, logs are there too. Meta is there too, just way less present as content is easy for the most stuff. (kinda like HC in WoW - you don't really care that your shaman dps is encha)
Also devs prohibit the use of dps meter, especially to point fingers at players. Which is kinda bad, as it puts smoke on players ability to gage performance.

[Echo of Soul]

It does, but only for people who are in statics doing EX content. They're a much quieter bunch than Mythic raiders because it isn't a part of the game you're going to stumble across by accident and Square is very much against people posting number requirements in-game (so all of the chatter for it is in discord servers, which you're not going to see if you're not in the discord for theorycrafting or a high-end raiding).

The meta absolutely exists, it just doesn't matter for the majority of the content in the game and most players can safely ignore it (I think one of the biggest reasons for that is tuning and the fact that rezzing someone in combat just limits their performance, in FF14 you can have 18/24 die and still clear the content via a LB to rez the whole party, it'll just add 2 minutes or so to the fight instead of causing a wipe). Now this doesn't apply to EX cause the dps can be too large of a hit for you to be able to meet the berserk timer.


So yeah, for FF14 it really does boil down to most of the number intensive content isn't particularly widely known and/or appealing to people who weren't already seeking it out.

Yeah that's essentially what I meant. Of course it exists but it's not out in the open. The average player will never experience it. Quite unlike WoW where they experience it almost immediately when doing any level of group content.

[Triceron]

If the end game were changed to not focus on numbers, then the community wouldn't be so obsessed with them.

I mean, I look at a game like Guild Wars 2 or Monster Hunter which rewards effective use of skills and simply overcoming the boss mechanics in any given fashion. Progression doesn't need to be singularly focused on numbers if the content was designed more towards skill and less about killing a boss before berserk timers wipe the raid.

If they allowed bosses to be designed to allow attrition to be an effective solution to a boss fight, then it could open up a lot more flexible compositions and solutions outside of out-gearing a raid. Support roles could be added back in, different ratios of the Holy Trinity could be considered.

Ultimately, that isn't the game WoW has become, so it's kind of hard to try and focus it back to the fantasy when the game really is all about the numbers.

[erifwodahs]

In WoW these days, you have min-maxers hasslling people in 5-man heroic dungeons already, and in normal leveling dungeons people get hassled for not playing a 'non-meta' class.

Is there any evidence to these claims? I have recently leveled 5 characters (last 6 weeks) via dungeon spam and never have I ever encountered any of that. "Hi" "bye" and "do you need" is the only things you get.

Min-Maxers don't do HCs or Normals, also min-maxers know that there is no meta until you have your legendary items and gear.
Unless someone is literally not using his spells, no-one reacts to that. Worst level in WoW is medium keys, where people think they are some kind of gods, but in reality they are shit, same in FF, where someone thinks that "they know better" but they actually don't and it appears to be in the same difficulty level band.

There are plenty of people in FF making passive aggressive comments on tanking, healing, pulling pace and so on and there are people who become very aggressive if you try to advice them.

[Triceron]

I find that hard to believe but I'll take your word for it. Let me put it this way, I've never played a popular multiplayer game with the types of differences I've talked about where a "meta" didn't eventually emerge. The level of toxicity was different, depending on the game, but "lol N00bZ" has been a thing in every multiplayer game I've ever experienced, especially as you move into upper middle/lower upper levels of performance.

It depends on the collective goals of the gameplay.

A game like Monster Hunter can be considered a multiplayer progression-based RPG with different 'classes' (different gameplay through different weapons). It incentivizes co-operative play by sharing the collective goal of taking down a big monster by any means necessary, and poses greater challenges through new variations of monsters. The more effective you are at playing the game, the quicker you can take down the bosses, and the progression is built around RNG for getting the drops you need to craft new and better gear.

The game only punishes the group through having a limited number of collective deaths per game. As long as everyone stays alive, you can take as long as you need to accomplish a mission. Certain comps may be more effective than others, but there's no DPS meters or stat-based exclusion to speak of in the game. As long as you can participate and be useful, you're welcomed to the party. Even if you aren't well geared, you can provide support by staying out of the fight and setting up traps, providing utility or helping heal team mates. There's more to the game than just killing things as fast as possible, and the co-op is very rewarding and refreshing from the WoW style 'Gear up or get out' raid compositions.

As someone who enjoys providing utility in a co-op setting, I think WoW has moved away from those roots to become a 'competitive Esports' type of approach. I don't think it's for a lack of creativity either, considering there's many great ideas for social co-op present in their other games like Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch and Diablo series.

[Guidance]

I think you are forgetting, improving yourself are also a rpg think,

The problem are about ppl attitude, got 1900 r.io on my main tank, was leveling war at lvl 54 got kicked from a normal dugeon because starting on left side on (HoA) are not the right thing to do

On pride, ppl lost 5 min to get a pride for a boss on keys 12-15 because they always want to kill the boss with pride and lust

I got every tank class with all 15's since legion, and can't suggest anything for any tank in pugs because they may leave

Wow got much problems, but still players mind now days don't work well for MMORPG

[Thirtyrock]

Well, I'm sure in *organized groups*, the combat log is gone over with a fine-tooth comb, *out of game channels*. That can't be regulated.

However, the PuG scene in FFXIV is MUCH more friendly simply because of that.

In WoW these days, you have min-maxers hasslling people in 5-man heroic dungeons already, and in normal leveling dungeons people get hassled for not playing a 'non-meta' class.

FFXIV has none of that, except on the highest-difficulty edges, and even then, if you want to make your group in the group-finder, you can't have a fit on people about their performance. If you want to make your own group, have at it, but you're basically not allowed to crap all over people in queue-found groups.

In my experience, at least, I haven't seen anyone making these types of comments in anything less than M+5. I haven't seen people dogging other people in a Heroic Dungeon since the first week of Cataclysm, if I'm honest. I only see it in upper middle content.

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It depends on the collective goals of the gameplay.

A game like Monster Hunter can be considered a multiplayer progression-based RPG with different 'classes' (different gameplay through different weapons). It incentivizes co-operative play by sharing the collective goal of taking down a big monster by any means necessary, and poses greater challenges through new variations of monsters. The more effective you are at playing the game, the quicker you can take down the bosses, and the progression is built around RNG for getting the drops you need to craft new and better gear.

The game only punishes the group through having a limited number of collective deaths per game. As long as everyone stays alive, you can take as long as you need to accomplish a mission. Certain comps may be more effective than others, but there's no DPS meters or stat-based exclusion to speak of in the game. As long as you can participate and be useful, you're welcomed to the party. Even if you aren't well geared, you can provide support by staying out of the fight and setting up traps, providing utility or helping heal team mates. There's more to the game than just killing things as fast as possible, and the co-op is very rewarding and refreshing from the WoW style 'Gear up or get out' raid compositions.

As someone who enjoys providing utility in a co-op setting, I think WoW has moved away from those roots to become a 'competitive Esports' type of approach. I don't think it's for a lack of creativity either, considering there's many great ideas for social co-op present in their other games like Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch and Diablo series.

I'm not familiar with Monster Hunter, so I don't have much to comment on there. Thank you for the perspective!

[cuafpr]

yes to both really... i'm very curious to see what WoW would be like without addons like DBM and DPS meters... I think most raids now are filled with gotcha mechanics as they design them assuming everyone uses DBM (or similar).

[Guidance]

I think you are forgetting, improving yourself are also a rpg think,

The problem are about ppl attitude, got 1900 r.io on my main tank, was leveling war at lvl 54 got kicked from a normal dugeon because starting on left side on (HoA) are not the right thing to do

On pride, ppl lost 5 min to get a pride for a boss on keys 12-15 because they always want to kill the boss with pride and lust

I got every tank class with all 15's since legion, and can't suggest anything for any tank in pugs because they may leave

Wow got much problems, but still players mind now days don't work well for MMORPG

[Soon-TM]

I think you are forgetting, improving yourself are also a rpg think,

The problem are about ppl attitude, got 1900 r.io on my main tank, was leveling war at lvl 54 got kicked from a normal dugeon because starting on left side on (HoA) are not the right thing to do

On pride, ppl lost 5 min to get a pride for a boss on keys 12-15 because they always want to kill the boss with pride and lust

I got every tank class with all 15's since legion, and can't suggest anything for any tank in pugs because they may leave

Wow got much problems, but still players mind now days don't work well for MMORPG

I completely agree, and still think that M+ would be a much better experience without the damn timer.

[arkanon]

Considering the exceptional quality of some of the SP / COOP RPGs that have been released over the last decade, I just think a lot of players who wanted an immersive, story driven experience have moved on to "better" options, which is completely fine.

In my opinion, wow was never a good "rpg", but a good mmo-rpg. Personally, I see them as very different genres.

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I completely agree, and still think that M+ would be a much better experience without the damn timer.

Personally, I do NOT like the timer in M+, but as with many of you, I started in Vanilla and for the bulk of wows lifespan, simply finishing the dungeon was good enough, and finishing it in a "good" time was a bonus in itself, and didnt require an actual loot reward for it.

[Jastall]

I started playing Baldur's Gate 3 just over the last week and I can't stress how accurately I find this paragraph to sum up what I've felt. WoW sucked me in back in Beta and for the last decade and a half, I've been stuck there, thinking I was getting a good RPG experience. I keep logging into WoW a few times a week hoping the magic will come back, but your comment nails why it's not. WoW is just so very shallow on the RPG side, and given that I'm not particularly interested in tryhard multiplayer content it's no wonder I find myself very much slipped away from the game. I actually enjoy the 30 minutes to an hour daily I play BG3 lately, compared to the hours of joyless work I put into WoW as recently as a few months ago.

I play WoW precisely to get into the raiding and M+ myself, as these are experiences you can only really get in MMOs and no MMO does group PvE even half as good as WoW. So I'm totally OK with the current state of affairs. But playing WoW purely for the story and RPG elements when I could be playing Mass Effect, Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, Fallout New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age Origins? Yeah, that would be like playing GTA for the driving instead of an actually good racing game like Forza. I'm sure some people do it, I just can't understand them. That goes for all versions of WoW of course, and I will forever be puzzled by people who think vanilla's shallow, boring and cookie cutter talent tree is anywhere near an exciting RPG feature.

[darklogrus]

Game was always about the numbers, early on it was threat meter that turned into dps meters, gear score turned into ilvl.

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yes to both really... i'm very curious to see what WoW would be like without addons like DBM and DPS meters... I think most raids now are filled with gotcha mechanics as they design them assuming everyone uses DBM (or similar).

The gotha mechanics have gotten worse along with mechanics stacking and overlapping, its pretty much gotten to the point where you better have those ad ons along with others otherwise bad thing can happen really quick..

[cuafpr]

Game was always about the numbers, early on it was threat meter that turned into dps meters, gear score turned into ilvl.

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The gotha mechanics have gotten worse along with mechanics stacking and overlapping, its pretty much gotten to the point where you better have those ad ons along with others otherwise bad thing can happen really quick..

and I think it would be much better without mechanic stacking like they do.... but then with addons its considered to easy...

[kaminaris]

Literally, every MMO I've played the last five years or so, other than WoW, does not have the numbers-focused behavior as the be-all/end-all. There's always some small handful of people that obsess over such things but it's not prevalent in any of those games the way it is in WoW. And, consequently, I've found all those other games to be much more fun and relaxing ... the entire point of a "game" in the first place

I have played couple myself and can confirm. That number obsession is practically only present in WoW. This is due to a fact usually harder fights are more skill based rather than artificial-dps-requirement. So, dodge shit, do weird stuff or you die. Rather than "if-you-dont-meet-this-totally-arbitrary-time/dps-requirement-you-die".

As for the topic.
Addons that change your UI -> should be in all games. Usually i find default UI's atrocious with WoW being a prime example and biggest offendant. They are mostly designed by graphic designer rather than usability designer. So shiny over usability.

Convienence addons -> something in development went wrong, addon like this (for example tomtom) should be simply made into a game itself, shame it took WoW 10+ years to figure that out. OR if something is simply tedious and someone made addon to make it easy, devs should fix it.

DPS Meters -> a solution to a problem created by devs in first place. Stop with arbitrary requirements, put more emphasis on reaction time rather than pushing buttons in correct order. Like if you have correct gear you should be able to get 150%+ of required dps on average player skill. There are tons of good mechanics that can be used as skill checks rather than arbitrary dps checks ex.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=284028/multi-sided-strike from Jadefire masters.
And if you want to make raids harder, make the reaction time window smaller.
Like dodge insta-kill shit on the ground -> LFR = 5s reaction time, Normal = 3s. Heroic 2.5s Mythic 1.5s

[Echo of Soul]

I completely agree, and still think that M+ would be a much better experience without the damn timer.

It would probably be a bit less toxic too. People are a lot more forgiving if they don't feel that you've ruined their day completely for making a mistake.

[Raisei]

1)

Numbers are 100% essential for a RPG to exist but is anyone else getting the feeling the community of WoW turned into something weird?

My question is:
"Do you feel like WoW turned more into a numbers and performance check than a fantasy game?"

Im not saying this people are enjoying the game wrong.
To some this is the best part of the game.

But does anyone else feel weirded out by it a little?

Hmm no, can't say so. I can perfectly fine balance my wish to a good fantasy against my wish to perform well. I have a headcanon for each of my characters, some more some less and whenever I play any of them I spend time studying what they can do and try to learn how everything works. That is in fact a big part of why I switch characters a lot. I need that challenge of adepting to new skills and I enjoy reading guides. Especially if it leads to a noticeable improvement.

Numbers are a part of this of course, but they are by far not everything. Keybind, Utility, Macros all of these things are a factor for high end content.

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If you dont mind, i also have another question

"Addons"

Do you think they are the reason why the WoW community ended like this?

One of the best things Blizzard is doing, is allowing the use of addons. Your UI is like a glove, it needs to fit you snugly but comfortably and very very few standard UIs in other games do that. Here you can customize everything to your liking.

Not to mention that Blizzard is very smart about it. They allow addons to fix issues with the game that they are not aware of without having to invest in it and when an addon begins to become so widespread that basically everyone uses it, they bake it into the game.

Addons also show how surprisingly stable WoW is. In SWTOR addons were forbidden because the Devs were afraid it would break their feeble code and destroy a game that was only barely running at the best of times. Here you run 20 addons and the game doesn't even stutter.

[potis]

If you dont mind, i also have another question

"Addons"

Do you think they are the reason why the WoW community ended like this?

It never was an addon problem, its a mentality problem of people that do not have the capability to improve, those are the ones crying.

I dont need an addon in other MMOs to tell me my group is shit, i literally did that random daily dungeon 2 days ago in 9 mins, i am at minute 25 and i am still in the damn dungeon, aka these DPS are shit.

I dont need the addon to tell me their DPS, the number doesnt matter, all i know is these guys are not doing as well as the previous ones, aka something is wrong.

When that keeps happening, eventually people will ask "WHY CANT I SEE WHATS GOING ON, WTF IS HAPPENING I JUST DID THIS IN 10MINS THE OTHER DAY AND ITS BEEN 30MINS AND I AM STILL HERE" and thats when addons are created.

[T-34]

FFXIV has none of that, except on the highest-difficulty edges, and even then, if you want to make your group in the group-finder, you can't have a fit on people about their performance. If you want to make your own group, have at it, but you're basically not allowed to crap all over people in queue-found groups.

FFXIV has the most toxic environment of any online game I have ever played. Even the developers encourage the players to snitch, harass and bully people who want to make an effort.
FFXIV specifically caters to entitled people that don't want to make an effort and whose enjoyment depend on that other people aren't better than them.

In WoW you are encouraged to try to become better, in FFXIV you are being persecuted if you try to stand out from the crowd.
FFXIV is a perfect totalitarian state simulator with big-tits anime girls.

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I agree
I also dislike youtubers who say "the community", "the majority", "this is the truth and i know it", "everyone" etc

But there is some acceptable scenarios to use this term. I think.
Ofcourse "the community" is not "everyone" but...you know...you can feel a general environment around you.

You dont feel "performance and numbers" are very prominent in the wow playerbase?

I personally feel it all around me
And i even feel like is impossible for anyone new to wow to not have an interaction with other player about "numbers".
(unless he plays alone and never does anything with anyone else)

Performance is very prominent amongst those I play with because the co-operative competitive aspect, which is unique for WoW, is what I find fun.
On the other hand I know people that just pick flowers and farm transmog. They don't give a flying feck about numbers and performance and are perfectly happy.

As long as someone participates in a group activity, that goes for everything in life, then other people will judge other people on their attitude, skill and effort. Expecting other people that do care about their performance to play with you if you don't care about your performance is entitled. Or in WoW-speak demanding a "carry".

There is nothing wrong with not liking the "performance and number-aspect" of WoW. What is wrong is to expect/demand that other people should stop liking it and/or play with you if you yourself don't care about your performance.

[kaminaris]

FFXIV has the most toxic environment of any online game I have ever played. Even the developers encourage the players to snitch, harass and bully people who want to make an effort.
FFXIV specifically caters to entitled people that don't want to make an effort and whose enjoyment depend on that other people aren't better than them.

In WoW you are encouraged to try to become better, in FFXIV you are being persecuted if you try to stand out from the crowd.
FFXIV is a perfect totalitarian state simulator with big-tits anime girls..

I think you got it completely backwards. Its more like "FFXIV you are being persecuted if you try to force elitism on the others."