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  1. #121
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    I really doubt they're working two expansions ahead like that. Concepts for the setting and art content maybe, but core design changes? I don't see that as likely.
    Agreed. They've shown this in the past by 100% changing course... when the garrison wasn't working they did the shipyard (which also sucked) and when azerite was working they did essences (which sucked too).

    The one thing they haven't tried is, hey maybe have nothing. I mean, Cata had nothing. Late MoP had nothing (MoP struck a good balance by adding in optional things like brawler's guild and proving grounds, they need to get back to that.

    We should go to Activision be like, hey fire blizz devs so they can't build any more systems... you'll save some money and players will like the game better! Lol.

  2. #122
    Spoiler, they don't learn anything. They always release dev posts about how much they've "learned" from X expansion, then just do the same thing in the next. It's pretty comical to watch.

    My big tin foil hat theory is that they're trying to find a system that actually works with a f2p model so they can just go ham on ingame purchases.

  3. #123
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post

    Legion

    - Max-level world content (Suramar) is good (immediately forgotten)
    Not so. Shadowlands has a lot of max-level world content. The problem is that they came up with a new idea for it that was terrible - it's effectively compulsory and most of it is not skippable on alts.

    Shadowlands

    - Players REALLY don't like not being able to mount at all
    And they REALLY, REALLY don't like it when some others effectively can (because Ghost Wolf and Druid forms, including travel form, still work).

    - Crafted legendaries/non-RNG borrowed power are a success
    Which goes back to something learned and immediately dropped in WoD, when crafted items could be made for any slot, upgraded to a high ilevel, and were limited only by the number you could equip at once. That meant crafting was always useful, and were non-RNG.

    Of course this was abandoned as part of their move to remove all non-RNG gear, with PvP gear going to a random drop system as well, something that they've fortunately abandoned (finally) and reverted to the old 'earn currency, but PvP gear' model.

    One new and poor innovation for crafting is having to produce massive amounts of a given item before you can learn to make a slightly better version for the legendaries. It floods the market with the lower end items and means most crafters will never make any gold off their craft. Probably most won't even try, so those that get in early and do make money corner the market (and grab all the gold).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Postmasters View Post
    I think a lot of it stems from their dogged determination to keep people out of the content they enjoy and force feed them garbage.

    I am sure some players enjoy daily quest zones but I imagine the overlap between them and players who value conduit upgrades and gem slots are few and far between.
    I don't mind Korthia too much. However, most of what I enjoy is going round murdering 'rares', something I also enjoyed back in MoP when they mostly dropped odd toys and such.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jellmoo View Post
    You raised some grest points, but I wanted to touch on this one specifically. I'm curious as to whether or not these were actually a failed experiment. They kinda felt like things that weren't actually all that bad, Blizzard just did a horrible job at incentivizing people to actually do them. The rewards never really matched the amount of time they took, and they never really did a good job updating the rewards as the expansion went on.

    I always kind of felt that they were onto something with these pieces of content, but they just kind of missed the landing. I wonder if this is the sort of thing they could go back to and do better, since it feels like a bit of a shame that they were just dropped altogether.
    I agree and feel the same about scenarios, which I suspect mainly took too long to build for the outcome they got more than just didn't work. I think they could've been cleaned up and made to work, but instead they were just dumped.

  4. #124
    Blizzard sort of, started this trend probably as far back as Cataclysm.

    WOTLK had some airs of it but it was never AS blunt as Cata onwards.

    Cata was the very early time we had things like, grinding reps for progress into a zone (Firelands) or Warforged and Bonus Rolls (Deathwing, the first time it was used). They basically entered a system of, creating ways to make the player waste more time rather than doing anything productive per say.

    And ultimatley this is where I felt WOTLK was such a good expansion, it had things LIKE this, but they were never obtrusive, it did them well, grinds felt long enough and never too long.

    Mists had some airs of it with the tillers and the fishing sub content, but the farm was never a big deal like say, Garrison.

    Mists content was "Optional" timewasting, while Garrison became "Mandatory" timewasting, and after Warlords, they pretty much made the game about making you play LESS as opposed to playing MORE, you had done your daily quota, now piss off.

    They basically wanted the game to feel more casual but for the wrong reasons, more like a mobile game suited to picking it up and playing when you felt like it, which is completley out of touch with a perpetually online gaming base constantly addicted to gaming.

    MMO players did not want to be told to slow down, they wanted to be told "you progress at your pace."

    This is again why XIV works, because while it DOES have time gated content, its optional, you dont HAVE to do Doma restoration you dont HAVE to do beast tribes, the only content you MAY have to do if you really want BiS is Tomestone farms and even THEY are optional.

    The key is with good optional content it shouldnt be something you feel stops you doing things, it should feel like it gives you something ELSE to do.

  5. #125
    They learn how much money "payers" i mean "players" gave them last expac... thats for sure.

  6. #126
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    There are rare exceptions when testers and the wider community band together and organize for one specific change. For example, I led the charge to remove the damage buff from Hunter's Mark in Shadowlands beta and was successful in getting the devs to notice. Luckily they agreed, and took it out.
    The devs are always told about class design issues in the betas, usually the player-base is fairly united about what's wrong even if they can't agree on what the fix should be (and often they can agree on that too). The devs often don't listen, and when they do they often 'fix' things in ways that either make them worse or bring up new, completely predictable problems. Over the years it's become very clear that their priorities in class design seldom match the players' priorities.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    It's true, they do. How relevant they are to developers probably varies a lot. But come on: Ion used to run the primary theorycrafting site on the planet for World of Warcraft (Elitist Jerks). Of course he's going to want to hear from like minds. Doesn't really matter if it's private forums, Twitter, e-mail, phone calls or whatever.

    And that's the problem really: Like minds, players whose experience of the game is nothing like that of casual players. So the design is heavily influenced by that with a pass to take care of their perception of what casual players want. It's game-engineered and over-engineered at that. It's dry and fairly soulless. Place on top of that a story team that is more interested in telling epic™ stories with obvious plot lines and overly dramatic soap-opera(ish) turns of the story and it's a mess.

    Theory crafting isn't the worst problem but it's a seed that runs through all of the system designers and prioritizing math over creativity is never going to lead anywhere useful.
    And yet what we have now, in terms of class design, is not what I the Elitist Jerks forums I remember would've been very happy with. Most of the classes' designs aren't very interesting, and there are few interesting choices to be made in terms of talents or gear. Where's the fun in that?

  7. #127
    blizzard has been known to cooperate/work with CIA on wow for unknown reasons. there was a flat out question about this to an official years ago and the reply was something like cant talk about this or no comment. if you know anything you know this pretty much means yes, if it was no the answer would clearly be no, wtf, are u crazy? etc.

    so i have a crazy conspiracy theory, alot of this stuff like blizz trying to force wow players to like something they hate, by cramming more and more of it down their throats, is partly an elaborate cia experiment, on how the population reacts to say a dictatorship, or in other words a government that is indirectly or directly etc trying to fuck the people. the experiment is trying to find how people will react in various situations, how they come together or not to fight for their rights or for things they believe in or want to happen, all the dynamics of society. i know this will be viewed by many as if its a crazy theory, but let me remind you this is literally cia's job, if you say this would never happen or cia would never do this, you are literally saying cia is terrible at doing their own jobs. you might say something like this is immoral or unethical or terrible but again, do some research, this if true would be some of the gentler things cia has ever done.

  8. #128
    Quote Originally Posted by Azxza View Post
    And hell just look at Korthia. It's supposed to be catchup gear so you can get your alts up to speed in a reasonable manner. Reality? It's yet another systems + currency + RNG grind. Why would they be so incredibly hostile towards alts when the game was already very alt friendly in the past, if not because they want to drive up engagement numbers?
    I've got alts that are well geared yet have only one soulbind because the Covenant storyline has to be done to open the others and you can't skip it. An essential part of a character's build this expansion is gated behind a fair bit of max-level questing, and once you've done it the first time it's not engaging questing either. Too bad if your alt is of a spec that needs the second or third soulbind for best performance.

    The great thing about Suramar was that all you missed out on if you didn't do it on an alt was some of the world quests. It didn't matter if you just ignored it on alts and just did the traditional thing for alts - run stuff that drops gear until you have the gear you need for the content you want to do with that alt. That alts these days need so much work before they're ready to go is just ridiculous. It was bad enough in WoD, but at least not having a fully functional garrison didn't stop you playing that alt in raids and such - it just meant they were a drag on your resources rather than a producer. Much the same in Legion, though initial the AP grind was a real problem (later on it was fast enough that it didn't matter too much).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Essem View Post
    After playing classic and now TBC classic one of the things ive learned is that making gold meaningless is the worst thing that has happened to WoW.
    Farming for gold was one of the main things keeping the world alive. Dailies or just farm for specific things.
    Pretty much. Also, destroying the crafting and gathering cycle and markets in various ways (farm, garrison, useless crafted gear, etc.) hasn't helped. Used to be that if you had nothing better to do farming/gathering on some alt made for the purpose while shooting the s**t with your guildies or in trade chat was a good way of spending a quiet evening. Now it's pointless and as a result few people do it, and so there's nobody to talk with, and so it's boring, and so nobody does it... a vicious and community destroying cycle.

  9. #129
    What not to do.
    They still need help on not doing on what not to do though.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    wE doN't kNoW wHaT pLaYeRs WaNt FoR cHarAcTeR CrEaTiOn MoDeLs

  10. #130
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    And yet what we have now, in terms of class design, is not what I the Elitist Jerks forums I remember would've been very happy with. Most of the classes' designs aren't very interesting, and there are few interesting choices to be made in terms of talents or gear. Where's the fun in that?
    What to change with classes and how much to change has always been a problem. GC used to talk about that. Developers want to mess with things. Customers don't necessarily mind that but too much change is a problem too. I think running a web site and doing the thing are pretty different. Ion strikes me as a smart guy and his credits designing raids speak for themselves. I'm not so sure that he understands how to fit the puzzle pieces together of a class that works and is fun to play. They certainly know how to math and spreadsheet stuff but most people don't believe that math and spreadsheets lead to fun. It's a risk-free conservative kind of design at this point. It's also boring because risk-free is often less interesting than the alternatives. Given this lawsuit business I don't expect that to change.

    Quote Originally Posted by strangehair View Post
    so i have a crazy conspiracy theory, alot of this stuff like blizz trying to force wow players to like something they hate, by cramming more and more of it down their throats, is partly an elaborate cia experiment, on how the population reacts to say a dictatorship, or in other words a government that is indirectly or directly etc trying to fuck the people. the experiment is trying to find how people will react in various situations, how they come together or not to fight for their rights or for things they believe in or want to happen, all the dynamics of society. i know this will be viewed by many as if its a crazy theory, but let me remind you this is literally cia's job, if you say this would never happen or cia would never do this, you are literally saying cia is terrible at doing their own jobs. you might say something like this is immoral or unethical or terrible but again, do some research, this if true would be some of the gentler things cia has ever done.
    That's nuts. The CIA wouldn't waste their time on stuff like this. Blizzard's co-operation in the past has been rumored to be that the game was being used as a messaging service for illegal and possibly other kinds of activities. That sounds less crazy than the CIA running an experiment on people. There's perfectly obvious reasons for what Blizzard is doing, no matter whether players like it or not. Changing out some pictures and removing juvenile sex jokes from the game is perfectly within their rights as developers. The fact is that the Blizzard TOS doesn't grant you any rights other than a license that they can revoke at any time for any reason to play the game. That's how it's always been and it's how most online games work.
    Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-10-28 at 06:51 AM.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  11. #131
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    - Crafted legendaries/non-RNG borrowed power are a success
    You're joking right? Any form of borrowed power is bad, especially when you're being forced to choose an ability out of 4 abilities with entirely different functions that are stronger depending on the type of content you're doing. More so when they kept preaching they would be perfectly balanced and you could play whatever you wanted in terms of aesthetics. Crafted Legendaries are boring, the all of the borrowed power is garbage.
    Quote Originally Posted by scarecrowz View Post
    Trust me.

    Zyky is better than you.

  12. #132
    tldr:

    it's all about player retention. everything is just a grind. the more you grind, the longer you pay.
    this is why they have kind of taken aways BIS items and/or made them way harder to get. once you got them, the game was "over".

    It's not about "happiness". they know that players are junkies. they even play a game they actually hate, because it gives them a certain dopamine rush from time to time.

    they just want you to keep playing and playing.
    Last edited by noctim2; 2021-10-28 at 08:50 AM.

  13. #133
    Quote Originally Posted by Azxza View Post
    My hunch is that Ion REALLY hates alts. It’s the only way I can make sense of their constant anti alt design.
    Yes. And Legion was at least somehow alt friendly, at least in the second half of the expansion. Since BfA and SL I can only play a handful of alts, and the rest is going to waste, because the game is loaded with daily and weekly stuff eating up all your time on one characters.

    This works in FF where you can play all you want on one character. It is overkill in WoW with alts which have to fulfull the same function.

  14. #134
    Quote Originally Posted by scubi666stacy View Post
    Yes. And Legion was at least somehow alt friendly, at least in the second half of the expansion. Since BfA and SL I can only play a handful of alts, and the rest is going to waste, because the game is loaded with daily and weekly stuff eating up all your time on one characters.
    In MoP I had alts for about half the classes in the game at max level, plus a couple of opposite-faction alts, more at the end as TI was a quite good place to AoE grind XP.

    In WoD I got one of each class to max level, because WoD had easy levelling especially on alt-Draenor itself (and there was sod-all else to do), and crafted gear plus Tanaan made basic gearing fairly quick. I also had several raid-level alts for other-faction raiding and such.

    In Legion I levelled a DH to add to the collection, but most of my alts didn't get levelled until Broken Shore, and some not until Argus. I still managed a couple of raiding characters, however.

    In BfA a ton just sat in Boralus or Drazalor, and 2-3 geared including mains was all I could manage. Many still sit there. Currently I have six max-level characters, and two are decently geared (but via m+ because we no longer raid for lack of numbers). Maybe the upcoming patch will make getting the alts out of BfA and into SL and then to 60 more appealing. Maybe.

  15. #135
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    Not so. Shadowlands has a lot of max-level world content. The problem is that they came up with a new idea for it that was terrible - it's effectively compulsory and most of it is not skippable on alts.
    Shadowlands has nothing like Suramar, a PvE story zone that can only be experienced at max-level. And no, the Maw and Korthia don't count. It has max-level questchains, but every expansion had that. The war campaign in BFA, etc. Different thing.

  16. #136
    Immortal FuxieDK's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dystemper View Post
    Lmao how many years? Come on man
    You said no new IPs for ages, I listed 3 within the last decade.

    Ages >>>>>>>>>> decade.

    Your statement is proven false.
    Fact (because I say so): TBC > Cata > Legion > ShaLa > MoP > DF > BfA > WoD = WotLK

    My pet collection --> http://www.warcraftpets.com/collection/FuxieDK/

  17. #137
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Shadowlands has nothing like Suramar, a PvE story zone that can only be experienced at max-level. And no, the Maw and Korthia don't count. It has max-level questchains, but every expansion had that. The war campaign in BFA, etc. Different thing.
    That's the thing - the Maw should count, but it's ruined by 1) being crap, and 2) being compulsory. Being compulsory is the problem with so much of SL (and was with much of BfA too). SL was presented as having all this stuff to do, and it was implied pre-beta that the vast majority of it would be optional, only needed if you wanted the cosmetics from it, etc. However, so very much has turned out to effectively be compulsory. Maybe if my guild still raided a bit less would be because a bit more gear would come from drops rather than grinding rep and currency, but overall there's just too much stuff you really can't avoid, especially if you're trying to set up alts.

  18. #138
    They learn that they can keep making the same bad design decisions on things and people will still buy the game and play for a few months, then when numbers dwindle because of poor design, they "fix" it as a content update and suddenly people resub again for a few months.

  19. #139
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    They learn that they can keep making the same bad design decisions on things and people will still buy the game and play for a few months, then when numbers dwindle because of poor design, they "fix" it as a content update and suddenly people resub again for a few months.
    Well if it keeps making Blizzard make money then I guess the design decisions aren't "bad".

  20. #140
    Quote Originally Posted by Myradin View Post
    Honestly I think their approach is to try and refine something rather than toss it out like the player base demands the moment they don't like something.
    Really? They've thrown out every borrowed power system completely instead of continuing to refine them. The things they do keep and try to refine are the wrong ones. AP, WF/TF, systems that force you into content you don't want to do. Basically my overall impression is the exact opposite of yours.
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