it seems blizz heavily tries to utilize FOMO as a means of re/gaining subscribers

[Lochton]

Everything about a game is the designers’ fault. They made it. How players interact with it is up to them, short of things like cheating.

If a game capitalizes on predatory behavior, that is the fault of the design.

But there is no predatory behavior with their design method? FOMO is literally a personal problem of having a "Fear Of Missing Out". Unless you'll call everything sold and now unavailable or limited on the market as predatory behavior?

[NineSpine]

But there is no predatory behavior with their design method? FOMO is literally a personal problem of having a "Fear Of Missing Out". Unless you'll call everything sold and now unavailable or limited on the market as predatory behavior?

FOMO is a psychological phenomenon. Game design is about manipulating the psychology of players. Trying to disaggregate the two is silly. When a game encourages negative behavior and negative emotions, it is bad game design and when it takes this to an extreme it becomes predatory.

This notion that you have that how players behave and how games are designed are two isolated things that have nothing to do with each other is nonsense.

[Echocho]

The design is encouraging the unhealthy behavior in a predatory attempt to get people to subscribe.

Game design is psychology. You incentivize players to do things by making the activities and/or the rewards provide positive emotions. That’s good game design. Bad game design is when you throw out fun and try to incentivize players based on avoiding negative emotions. That’s what this kind of FOMO-driven design does. Rather than saying “look at this amazing thing to do and the cool stuff you get from succeeding at it” they say “do you want to feel like you missed out later?”

It’s the same design that drives predatory mobile games.

It's the only way they can get people to play the game. Remember that the game is being run by an encounter designer, not a game designer.
It's very possible that they don't even have any actual game designers on the team considering the systems driven mess the game became after Ion took over.

[exochaft]

FOMO is a psychological phenomenon. Game design is about manipulating the psychology of players. Trying to disaggregate the two is silly. When a game encourages negative behavior and negative emotions, it is bad game design and when it takes this to an extreme it becomes predatory.

This notion that you have that how players behave and how games are designed are two isolated things that have nothing to do with each other is nonsense.

They can be segregated to some degree, it depends on intent. We literally had some level of emotional response to everything, and whether the concept of FOMO is a positive, negative, or neutral really depends on context.

When it's coming to WoW at this current moment, I'd say the FOMO issue is mostly a negative based upon the intentions behind the implementation. I have zero problems with Blizz wanting to have people play their game, the problem is the FOMO aspect is almost all they have. Instead of making decisions based upon what's good for the game or fun for the players, it's based upon trying to manipulate players instead of drawing them in with a better state of the game. Part of their issue is that many aspects of WoW are designed to be disposable, to where using FOMO as a manipulation tool constantly wears out players. Again, there's nothing wrong with 'limited time' content, but that's all WoW is right now.

Another aspect of FOMO is how transparent it really is, beyond just how important of a factor it may be in the players decision (i.e. if a game is fun and engaging, FOMO likely doesn't have a huge effect on a player or doesn't matter as much). It's akin to the illusion of choice, where being aware of the illusion or constantly reminded of the illusion detracts from the experience, yet the concept is very integral to making great games. If you constantly see the guard rails or the limitations or forced decisions, there is no longer an illusion of choice but rather a perception of no player agency. However, all games need guard rails due to design and implementation limitations, and how strong your illusion is will greatly assist a player's ability to maintain a sense of player agency where you may have limited choices. Going back to FOMO, being constantly reminded that all the best things are limited (whether it's items, content, etc.) or destined to be thrown out in the next patch/expansion breeds resentment and apathy, which ties into WoW currently designed to reset itself every patch or expansion.

This is why I ultimately think it'll be 10.0 before we'd see any potential real changes. While they're bringing back the Mage Tower in 9.1.5, I seriously doubt it was planned prior to all the fallout that has occurred at Blizz. While making old content relevant and adding new rewards is a great idea, I still don't buy that it was given back to the players because they felt it was a good game decision... rather it was put in to stop the hemorrhaging of players from the game by just giving them stuff to distract them. Is the Mage Tower going to become a staple of the game? Are other systems that were fairly popular in their own time making a permanent comeback? There's zero indication that this will occur right now, and most of their 9.1.5 content is well within the expected norm of X.1.5 patches.

[Dhrizzle]

The design is encouraging the unhealthy behavior in a predatory attempt to get people to subscribe.

Game design is psychology. You incentivize players to do things by making the activities and/or the rewards provide positive emotions. That’s good game design. Bad game design is when you throw out fun and try to incentivize players based on avoiding negative emotions. That’s what this kind of FOMO-driven design does. Rather than saying “look at this amazing thing to do and the cool stuff you get from succeeding at it” they say “do you want to feel like you missed out later?”

It’s the same design that drives predatory mobile games.

It's a personal issue if you feel negative emotions when you fail to do something as opposed to positive emotions when you succeed. I've personally never had a problem with missing out on the various holiday, timewalking or one-off events like the Legion Mage Tower and if a video game did make me feel miserable as it does with you I would probably stop playing altogether and ignore it from then on.

[Beefhammer]

That's how it seems to me at least. Especially this expansion.

Never felt ant FOMO this expansion. I don't suffer from it generally, but there hasn't been anything I felt that I needed to do or else I'd miss out. Felt the same way about challenge dungeons, artifact skins, and the mage tower.

But really what would be FOMO in SL?

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It's a personal issue if you feel negative emotions when you fail to do something as opposed to positive emotions when you succeed. I've personally never had a problem with missing out on the various holiday, timewalking or one-off events like the Legion Mage Tower and if a video game did make me feel miserable as it does with you I would probably stop playing altogether and ignore it from then on.

Here, here. People like that are the ones with an addiction problem and should stop playing and seek help. If they truly have negative emotions when failing or missing out something then choose to blame the developer, the issue is personal and not related to game development.

Like you I don't feel the effects of FOMO. I buy plenty of games day 1 or do events when they happen because I want to. At the same time I typically wait for movies to come out for home viewing as opposed to seeing them in theaters. I typically wait for a while season to be on on-demand or streaming so I can binge it. And in regards to WoW there is so much I missed out on and just don't care.

Achievements in general have ruined games IMO. It has turned this hobby into a dick measuring contest with everyone feeling the "need" to 100% every game and to do and acquire everything as opposed to just playing for fun. We didn't need progression, rankings, trophies, and all the another garbage padding put in games today to enjoy them. Hell most people don't enjoy 100% games the just do it to get that 100%. Pretty sure I have never fully completed any game ever unless it naturally happens and can't be avoided. Most recently the ne FF pixel remasters. So many achievements left across 4 games and have no interest since I beat them all already. No point in going back to find a few enemies or chest that had zero effect on my enjoyment or completing the game.

[Gaidax]

there is definete FOMO atm with people being forced to sub now to gear their chars so they can do mage tower once it is releaed in 3-4months because onl ytiem they can do it wil lbe once every half of year.

its disgusting predatory tactics.

That's just bullshit because it's event on the cycle. If that would be one time thing you could have a leg to stand on, but in this case - it's just your personal salt talking rather than anything actually objective.

[Accendor]

there is definete FOMO atm with people being forced to sub now to gear their chars so they can do mage tower once it is releaed in 3-4months because onl ytiem they can do it wil lbe once every half of year.

its disgusting predatory tactics.

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there is nothign that suggest this to be true

for al lwe know it may be 1 time thing that wont return for years and once again without original or sl version of transmogs .

If you have FOMO you should see some therapist either way, so good from Blizzard to help people gwtting their shit together.

[Nzx]

That's how it seems to me at least. Especially this expansion.

"FOMO" is going to be this expansion's "meaningful choices" I reckon. Maybe next expansion they'll listen to your crowd again and give us all grey Pol Pot robes to wear so you can all be happy that no one is missing out and you never have to try to actually accomplish anything.

[littlefoote]

[QUOTE=kamuimac;53389009]there is definete FOMO atm with people being forced to sub now to gear their chars so they can do mage tower once it is releaed in 3-4months because onl ytiem they can do it wil lbe once every half of year.

Why on earth do you need to gear up for content that will be scaled to old expansion levels?

[GucciWarr]

why does anyone even care about cosmetics? this game is dead in 3-4 years, everybody knows it. If the mage tower revamp is really your reason for playing again, that’s so pathetic and sad. you’re just getting cosmetics no one will give a shit about.

don’t get me started on you losers looking for a “challenge”, the only thing semi hard in the game is mythic raising but you sort of players wouldn’t dare dip your toes in that cause it requires too much time and this is supposed to be a game right?

fuck retail wow please stop supporting this dead horse game

and yes this FOMO is the only way blizz can reach its heroine addict wow players who are numb to anything else...don’t worry we’ll get gacha soon

[Zantera]

Yeah I don't agree with something being FOMO when it's on a cycle that will continue after SL just like TW has been on a cycle since WoD. If that's FOMO then shouldn't Blizz remove all seasonal things like PVP achievements/titles/mounts, Keystone Master, Cutting Edge? Remove all world events because those are limited to 1-2 weeks a year.

Just go all in to make the world as boring and static as possible with no events at all.

[loras]

Yeah I don't agree with something being FOMO when it's on a cycle that will continue after SL just like TW has been on a cycle since WoD. If that's FOMO then shouldn't Blizz remove all seasonal things like PVP achievements/titles/mounts, Keystone Master, Cutting Edge? Remove all world events because those are limited to 1-2 weeks a year.

Just go all in to make the world as boring and static as possible with no events at all.

The rewards are not the aspects that make it dynamic though.

And if you for some reason can't bother with content with no reward then consider that things like i.e. the violet proto drake and the countless rotation-dependant achievements can also work.

Just give all gladiators a "gladiator token" so that at the end of each season they can take a pick from the gladiator mount pool, including all past mounts.

[Zyrinx]

With normalized stats in the mage-tower revamp, we dont need to gear up for it at all...

No FOMO.

Was this ever stated?

[BananaHandsB]

That's how it seems to me at least. Especially this expansion.

If you're going to make a post for discussion, at least put some effort into it. You provided no persuasive reasoning to validate your argument, just stated your opinion. This isn't a blog.

[NineSpine]

You both couldn't be more wrong. Games aren't designed for you individually. They are designed for larger target audiences. Ergo: the psychology that a design preys upon reveals the intent towards a group, even when -you- individually don't fall prey to it. Put another way: you may personally not be addicted to gambling or drugs, but that doesn't make casinos and drug dealers any less responsible for the harm that befalls people who do fall prey to their psychological traps.

At the end of the day, Blizzard is a business, and mass psychological engineering is what sells their products. Blaming players for falling into the psychological traps that developers lay out is akin to blaming addicts for their addiction. Addicts don't go looking for addictions, but dealers sure go looking for potential addicts with intent. It is no coincidence that online games resemble casinos more and more. FOMO is but one tactic in the arsenal of predators, but it is one that works particularly well in the virtual space because there is no cost to controlling supply, and there's a very large supply of potential customers who haven't seen through it (yet) as you both (might) have.

The question isn't whether FOMO is real, or who's to blame for it (both have very clear cut answers), but rather what degree of it is permissible in a commercial context. Unfortunately game design has become such that the question now requires an answer through legislation, as the scale of it vastly overshadows it as a "personal issue".

I think what is really infuriating about this whole discussion is that these folks seem overwhelmingly preoccupied with concepts of blame, as though something can't be a problem if you can sufficiently find a way to point the finger at someone. This way of thinking is really cancerous to anyone's overall worldview, and this is a good example because it is making people defend poor game design. Why? Because to them it is simply more valuable to be able to point the finger at someone and say "Well you are bad for falling victim to FOMO" than it is to have a better designed game. They'd rather have a bad game that gives them finger-pointing opportunities than a good game that doesn't.

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Yeah I don't agree with something being FOMO when it's on a cycle that will continue after SL just like TW has been on a cycle since WoD. If that's FOMO then shouldn't Blizz remove all seasonal things like PVP achievements/titles/mounts, Keystone Master, Cutting Edge? Remove all world events because those are limited to 1-2 weeks a year.

Just go all in to make the world as boring and static as possible with no events at all.

Events can have value. For example, most holidays couldn't overlap because they involve decorating the cities and have potentially conflicting objectives. There is a valid reason to have those once per year. There is something gained.

However, Timewalking doesn't have any of those upsides. Blizzard could simply allow us to run any dungeon from any expansion. This bizarre obsession with time gating, shelving old content, etc. is a distinctly WoW problem. Other MMOs don't do this, and it has become a bigger and bigger problem as time has gone on and the amount of content that is relevant has become a smaller and smaller percentage of the game. The WORLD of warcraft is extensive, gigantic, and full of massive amounts of content... and Blizzard chooses to hide most of it away or deprecate it. It's bizarre.

[Beefhammer]

You both couldn't be more wrong. Games aren't designed for you individually. They are designed for larger target audiences. Ergo: the psychology that a design preys upon reveals the intent towards a group, even when -you- individually don't fall prey to it. Put another way: you may personally not be addicted to gambling or drugs, but that doesn't make casinos and drug dealers any less responsible for the harm that befalls people who do fall prey to their psychological traps.

At the end of the day, Blizzard is a business, and mass psychological engineering is what sells their products. Blaming players for falling into the psychological traps that developers lay out is akin to blaming addicts for their addiction. Addicts don't go looking for addictions, but dealers sure go looking for potential addicts with intent. It is no coincidence that online games resemble casinos more and more. FOMO is but one tactic in the arsenal of predators, but it is one that works particularly well in the virtual space because there is no cost to controlling supply, and there's a very large supply of potential customers who haven't seen through it (yet) as you both (might) have.

The question isn't whether FOMO is real, or who's to blame for it (both have very clear cut answers), but rather what degree of it is permissible in a commercial context. Unfortunately game design has become such that the question now requires an answer through legislation, as the scale of it vastly overshadows it as a "personal issue".

Never claimed they were, but FOMO is a personal problem. Business may take advantage of people that succumb to FOMO, but it is a personal issue.

[NineSpine]

Never claimed they were, but FOMO is a personal problem. Business may take advantage of people that succumb to FOMO, but it is a personal issue.

If blizzard makes their game worse to prey on people with fomo problems, the game is still made worse for all of us, so it objectively is not a personal problem. These design decisions do not only impact those people. They change the game for all of us.

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It's a personal issue if you feel negative emotions when you fail to do something as opposed to positive emotions when you succeed. I've personally never had a problem with missing out on the various holiday, timewalking or one-off events like the Legion Mage Tower and if a video game did make me feel miserable as it does with you I would probably stop playing altogether and ignore it from then on.

When blizzard designs the game a certain way to invoke certain emotions, that isn’t a personal problem. That’s a game design problem. Arrogantly, condescendingly pointing at people and telling them to feel differently doesn’t magically transform bad design into good design.

The overwhelming amount of time gating and other time limitation methods blizzard uses doesn’t make the game better for anyone. It makes the game worse for you, just so that they can capitalize on someone else’s FOMO. You are almost literally thanking blizzard for making the game worse for you because you are getting some kind of perverse satisfaction out of knowing that the bad design is worse for someone else than it is for you.

This is why cancerous, anti-empathy logic ruins things for everyone. You are so busy pointing fingers at the FOMO people that you don’t care that Blizzard is making the game worse for you too just to prey on those people.

[Beefhammer]

If blizzard makes their game worse to prey on people with fomo problems, the game is still made worse for all of us, so it objectively is not a personal problem. These design decisions do not only impact those people. They change the game for all of us.

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When blizzard designs the game a certain way to invoke certain emotions, that isn’t a personal problem. That’s a game design problem. Arrogantly, condescendingly pointing at people and telling them to feel differently doesn’t magically transform bad design into good design.

The overwhelming amount of time gating and other time limitation methods blizzard uses doesn’t make the game better for anyone. It makes the game worse for you, just so that they can capitalize on someone else’s FOMO. You are almost literally thanking blizzard for making the game worse for you because you are getting some kind of perverse satisfaction out of knowing that the bad design is worse for someone else than it is for you.

This is why cancerous, anti-empathy logic ruins things for everyone. You are so busy pointing fingers at the FOMO people that you don’t care that Blizzard is making the game worse for you too just to prey on those people.

Nothing wrong with limited runs. But if we go this route then every business practice is predatory and we should just stop supporting everything. Item goes on sale for the weekend, predatory. New product has a initial sale, predatory. New customer deals, predatory, returning customer deals, predatory.

No business is allowed to do anything to generate revenue through deals since it's predatory and feeds on FOMO. Stop worrying limited run items in games. If you have the time and get them bonus, if not oh well. Worrying about this shit, all over, not just in games is bad. Just don't worry.

Frankly, if I cared, I'd be excited to give the Mage Tower a shot again on some other classes for some neat re-skins. There have been plenty of games that have gotten me to come back for a go by offering something I was interested in doing or obtaining. I just don't see an issue.

[subsidalos]

No amount of FOMO will make me come back this expansion