STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[zysis]

\calculus is hard

It is? Never noticed. It's fun, I have to admit. The problem many of you have is that you seemingly think you are the arbiter of what fun is and speak for everyone. You don't. Thankfully. You merely experience things within a narrow bandwidth and expect that everyone follows you. If I wanted one-dimensional fights with no real challenge at all, I'd play Classic. The game is almost 20 years old. Blizzard knows who plays and who stays. Some content just isn't aimed at noobs nor was it ever intended to be. Brats think they should see all the content because they pay for it. Let me reiterate that less than 2% of the subscriptions during Vanilla even saw a fully cleared Naxx. It was just sad Blizzard had to release an expansion and increase the level cap. I'm sure many would still be wiping in there and that's a good thing. Because what doesn't make you rage quit, makes you learn your class and get MUCH better at it. Or have an emo hissy fit, grab that TV remote and beg Blizzard for easy wins and watch the subs decline overnight. Why do you think Classic was so popular?

Challenging is memorable. Challenging is fun. If every boss wasn't faceroll and easily killed you wouldn't remember it in a year nor feel compelled to improve your Ui, your computer, your mods, your talents and your bindings and rotation.

What gets to me is how few of you even see this. If there were not people pushing for greater challenges most of you would have no one to cookie cut your spec and talents and even be manipulated by Blizzard bean counters to roll the flavour of the month class.... What a cowardly new world that has such people in it. Back in vanilla you had to work it all out on your own or find those that would show you where you went wrong. You either got better or were stuck in T1 or T2 content. -Most were stuck in T1 not because they sucked, but because they didn't' have good players to cookie cut from. ie Seasoned Everquest players who came to the very easy and watered down version that we call World of Warcraft. Everquest wasn't even that hard compared to Ultima Online or even Ragnarok online. Blizzard by no means created the first MMO and it was by no means the hardest of them by a long shot.

The problem is that Blizzard got greedy and felt they had to pander to the lazy cookie cutters and the target dummy dps types. It's a good thing but the problem is that they rarely see a wall and while being terrible Blizzard has convinced them they are good and can hang. There's really no drive to get good other than personal drive or the want to have better gear. If people were more well trained in their class, it would be better for everyone; less keks in PUG M+ and raids and PVP would be far more thrilling than the FoTM cookie cutter realm it is now.

Game is full of cookie cutters now who drone their way through content pretending they are good. They live in the shadows of the few who think things through, create routes and are always, ALWAYS pushing the cutting edge because for them it's all part of the challenge, which makes the game fun and playable even 17 years later.

Gone are the days of in order to SEE this raid you need to complete this group content in the world THEN join a guild, be social (it's an MMO ffs) and learn that in MMO gaming you will always be grouped with others to complete end game content. Otherwise it's not an MMO at all and you might as well go play a single player game. The sheer volume of keks I see on the daily in M+ is awful. Lack of interrupts, lack of mechanical knowledge, just cookie cutter target dummy types who then declare the content was hard but if they pulled their weight, it would be trivial. Get 5 well researched, strong players who understand the importance of mechanics and you are in the 20+ groups. Get 10 or 20 of those players and you are in Mythic raiding. Simple. Every resource is available them including walkthroughs of content yet they refuse to spend 5 minutes watching a video and will quite arrogantly expect me to waste an hour carrying them through a scuffed 15+ key which to me is like running Wailing Caverns. It really is that easy to do when you reach a certain level of skill in the game.

In the end it's Blizzards' fault for not teaching the keks how to play well. The class quests in vanilla ensured by the time you hit 60 you had a very good grasp of your class and the important stuff your class can do like interrupt and move out of floor candy. I can't stress how difficult the sub 10+ content is in pugging because people simply suck at the game. Half their fault because they have this drone-like approach to gaming, but also Blizzards' fault for not snapping the players out of their drone-like playstyle.

It's just a pity target dummies don't fight back and need to be interrupted. Then again, they'd just never touch a target dummy so ... ugh.

[NineSpine]

It is? Never noticed. It's fun, I have to admit. The problem many of you have is that you seemingly think you are the arbiter of what fun is and speak for everyone. You don't. Thankfully. You merely experience things within a narrow bandwidth and expect that everyone follows you. If I wanted one-dimensional fights with no real challenge at all, I'd play Classic. The game is almost 20 years old. Blizzard knows who plays and who stays. Some content just isn't aimed at noobs nor was it ever intended to be. Brats think they should see all the content because they pay for it. Let me reiterate that less than 2% of the subscriptions during Vanilla even saw a fully cleared Naxx. It was just sad Blizzard had to release an expansion and increase the level cap. I'm sure many would still be wiping in there and that's a good thing. Because what doesn't make you rage quit, makes you learn your class and get MUCH better at it. Or have an emo hissy fit, grab that TV remote and beg Blizzard for easy wins and watch the subs decline overnight. Why do you think Classic was so popular?

Challenging is memorable. Challenging is fun. If every boss wasn't faceroll and easily killed you wouldn't remember it in a year nor feel compelled to improve your Ui, your computer, your mods, your talents and your bindings and rotation.

What gets to me is how few of you even see this. If there were not people pushing for greater challenges most of you would have no one to cookie cut your spec and talents and even be manipulated by Blizzard bean counters to roll the flavour of the month class.... What a cowardly new world that has such people in it. Back in vanilla you had to work it all out on your own or find those that would show you were you went wrong. You either got better or were stuck in T1 or T2 content. -Most were stuck in T1 not because they sucked, but because they didn't' have good players to cookie cut from.

Game is full of cookie cutters now who drone their way through content pretending they are good. They live in the shadows of the few who think things through, create routes and are always, ALWAYS pushing the cutting edge because for them it's all part of the challenge, which makes the game fun and playable even 17 years later.

It's amazing how hard you guys work to turn literally any topic into an excuse to do some creepy bragging about how amazing at the game you are and how the whole game would collapse if not for you.

I'm not even really sure what point you are trying to make. I said repeatedly that Blizzard is good at designing challenging content that is fun. Where they fail is designing non-challenging content that is fun. I don't know what any of that has to do with this weird tirade you went on about cookie cutter builds.

[zysis]

It's amazing how hard you guys work to turn literally any topic into an excuse to do some creepy bragging about how amazing at the game you are and how the whole game would collapse if not for you.

I'm not even really sure what point you are trying to make. I said repeatedly that Blizzard is good at designing challenging content that is fun. Where they fail is designing non-challenging content that is fun. I don't know what any of that has to do with this weird tirade you went on about cookie cutter builds.

I like how you completely distort what I've said to suit your own limited view of my point. I even say it plainly; people don't suck, they just aren't trained in the right way. It's sad how you feel the need to make such a pointless comment and completely miss the point only to jump on someone you think is being elitist. I want people to be good at the game. I blame Blizzard. I want to PUG and not smash my head on the screen because that dude didn't bother to even do ANY homework about the encounters. Does this compute? It's not calculus.

Non challenging content fun-? Wut? There's a few old expansions there for you to have 'fun' in. Oh you want to be rewarded too? Yeah no.

[NineSpine]

I like how you completely distort what I've said to suit your own limited view of my point. I even say it plainly; people don't suck, they just aren't trained in the right way. It's sad how you feel the need to make such a pointless comment and completely miss the point only to jump on someone you think is being elitist. I want people to be good at the game. I blame Blizzard. I want to PUG and not smash my head on the screen because that dude didn't bother to even do ANY homework about the encounters. Does this compute? It's not calculus.

Sure, WoW does a terrible job of teaching new players. FF14 nails this coincidentally.

What does that have to do with Blizzard being bad at making non-challenging content fun?

[m4Zzo928]

It's amazing how hard you guys work to turn literally any topic into an excuse to do some creepy bragging about how amazing at the game you are and how the whole game would collapse if not for you.

I'm not even really sure what point you are trying to make. I said repeatedly that Blizzard is good at designing challenging content that is fun. Where they fail is designing non-challenging content that is fun. I don't know what any of that has to do with this weird tirade you went on about cookie cutter builds.

Not to interject, but I'd honestly argue if they double, yes double the amount of content, I think it'd be a much healthier situation. Players are efficiency nuts, so they rush through content, then sit there at end game wondering why they're bored. End game has at most 1, 2 zones you can do anything in, and what they do is create sandbox areas that rely on rng drops that takes a long while to complete. With the amount of content they have in the entirety of the game, I think they should be able to figure something out besides legacy raids and dungeons to help fill the lul's in content patches. I mean imagine legacy zones. Zones that get brought back up to max level, and the gear gets updated a bit, it gets a bit shined up, perhaps a historical vibe, explaining the events of the zone, and this can be used as max level content. There's so many zones this could restore and help the fact that end game is sorely lacking for non-raiders and non-mythic players.

They can do this kind of stuff too, they've already proven they could. There just has to be proper rewards and engaging content, aka content with some level of difficulty.

[Necromantic]

Not to interject, but I'd honestly argue if they double, yes double the amount of content, I think it'd be a much healthier situation. Players are efficiency nuts, so they rush through content, then sit there at end game wondering why their bored..

To be fair, that's those player's problem. You can't design games around people who play 23 hours a day. Normal people will never be able to keep up.

If they want to be efficient and complete everything and have nothing else to do... go play something else. Go outside... or spend time with your family.

[m4Zzo928]

To be fair, that's those player's problem. You can't design games around people who play 23 hours a day. Normal people will never be able to keep up.

If they want to be efficient and complete everything and have nothing else to do... go play something else. Go outside... or spend time with your family.

I think it has to be acknowledged though. It's a culture issue, and it's reinforced by streamers, and in game social content people rush to the end and if you get lost you better hope you're in a group of humans and not anti-social people, and we can't say "who cares about streamers", because when you add up 500k people watching these streams...It matters. I'm not so much asking for changes to end game besides more content, more content is needed than just one sandbox zone. I think they need to tap into the ridiculous amount of content they have, seemingly endless, that one will most likely never see if you haven't played every expansion.

[NineSpine]

Not to interject, but I'd honestly argue if they double, yes double the amount of content, I think it'd be a much healthier situation. Players are efficiency nuts, so they rush through content, then sit there at end game wondering why their bored. End game has at most 1, 2 zones you can do anything in, and what they do is create sandbox areas that rely on rng drops that takes a long while to complete. With the amount of content they have in the entirety of the game, I think they should be able to figure something out besides legacy raids and dungeons to help fill the lul's in content patches. I mean imagine legacy zones. Zones that get brought back up to max level, and the gear gets updated a bit, it gets a bit shined up, and can be used as max level content. There's so many zones this could restore and help the fact that end game is sorely lacking for non-raiders and non-mythic players.

They can do this kind of stuff too, they've already proven they could. There just has to be proper rewards and engaging content, aka content with some level of difficulty.

The lack of content in the game is amazing, and it really is incredible how many people not only make excuses for it, but actively argue for how amazing it is to get so little content. The most recent FF14 patch, which is just an X.1 patch, had all of the following:

1. New PvP mode with three maps
2. One Ultimate raid boss
3. An Alliance raid with four bosses
4. A new Extreme difficulty level of a trial from the last patch
5. One new dungeon
6. A new Unreal difficulty of an old trial
7. A new reputation
8. Five new quest lines
9. A new housing district
10. A new system for buying housing
11. Significant updates to some of the worst-dated content from the vanilla version of the game
12. "Adventurer Plates", which is a system that lets you set up a customized calling card showing your character off
13. A codex to help people catch up on the story or go over things they forgot

FF14 gets a patch like that every FOUR MONTHS. Meanwhile, Blizzard struggles to get us a patch every 8 months, and then has us sit for up to a year at the end of an expansion getting nothing.

[VMSmith]

The problem many of you have is that you seemingly think you are the arbiter of what fun is and speak for everyone. You don't. Thankfully. You merely experience things within a narrow bandwidth and expect that everyone follows you.

I want to PUG and not smash my head on the screen because that dude didn't bother to even do ANY homework about the encounters. Does this compute? It's not calculus.

Non challenging content fun-? Wut? There's a few old expansions there for you to have 'fun' in. Oh you want to be rewarded too? Yeah no.

It's amazing how much you folk actually project your attitudes onto others.

Sure, it's all the casual people that are acting as the "arbiters of fun" and "speaking for everyone". It's definitely not you, the person who says how they want other people to play and states what content anyone who disagrees with you should be doing and how they should be rewarded, eh?

[m4Zzo928]

The lack of content in the game is amazing, and it really is incredible how many people not only make excuses for it, but actively argue for how amazing it is to get so little content. The most recent FF14 patch, which is just an X.1 patch, had all of the following:

1. New PvP mode with three maps
2. One Ultimate raid boss
3. An Alliance raid with four bosses
4. A new Extreme difficulty level of a trial from the last patch
5. One new dungeon
6. A new Unreal difficulty of an old trial
7. A new reputation
8. Five new quest lines
9. A new housing district
10. A new system for buying housing
11. Significant updates to some of the worst-dated content from the vanilla version of the game
12. "Adventurer Plates", which is a system that lets you set up a customized calling card showing your character off
13. A codex to help people catch up on the story or go over things they forgot

FF14 gets a patch like that every FOUR MONTHS. Meanwhile, Blizzard struggles to get us a patch every 8 months, and then has us sit for up to a year at the end of an expansion getting nothing.

That's a lot, I don't play FF14, good to see they have more content. I have an urge to play wow right now, but I know I'm just going to get stuck gated end game, or doing the same 7 quests over and over. I think they can do way better, and I hope they do, but I'm worried that people think that new management has saved the game to an extent, but I think it may be worse. That's more pessimistic, but I have to see it to believe it. Especially if you unionize staff that has underperformed, because then you may not be able to get rid of poor workers, and lets all be real, poor workers exist, I mean I'd argue there's more poor than great workers. A little off topic, but very cautious about the state of the game. I'll drop in to check and talk about it though.

[Necromantic]

I think it has to be acknowledged though. It's a culture issue, and it's reinforced by streamers, and in game social content people rush to the end and if you get lost you better hope you're in a group of humans and not anti-social people, and we can't say "who cares about streamers", because when you add up 500k people watching these streams...It matters. I'm not so much asking for changes to end game besides more content, more content is needed than just one sandbox zone. I think they need to tap into the ridiculous amount of content they have, seemingly endless, that one will most likely never see if you haven't played every expansion.

Culture issues sure are hard to change... if at all possible. And streamers? I (personally) can say "Who cares about them?" I've seriously never understood the obsession over them. Random plebs with webcams, several who are not even good at the games they play, who act like they have some kind of problems are idolized. To top it off, people toss money at them. I maintain, if people have money they want to toss away for nothing, I'll go buy a webcam right now. They can toss me all the money they want.

I know I always fall back on this but I feel MoP had a great balance of gameplay and content to do. I understand trying new things to find what people like but man, to realize something was a failure and keep it the entire expansion is torture. But I guess re-doing the entire design when the expansion is already out and you're likely already working on the next one isn't practical today.

- - - Updated - - -

It's amazing how much you folk actually project your attitudes onto others.

Sure, it's all the casual people that are acting as the "arbiters of fun" and "speaking for everyone". It's definitely not you, the person who says how they want other people to play and states what content anyone who disagrees with you should be doing and how they should be rewarded, eh?

Checkmate... :s

[VMSmith]

I know I always fall back on this but I feel MoP had a great balance of gameplay and content to do.

MoP was, without a doubt, the best expansion in the entire history of WoW for my playstyle. I never even got the hatred for scenarios, I loved the heck out of those. The only thing in MoP that I felt was dumb was the Proving Grounds requirement for matchmaking. Just let people play the game, ffs. But, other than that, it was top to bottom the best time I have ever had in WoW. Timeless Isle wore out its welcome, eventually, but the pacing for the rest of the expansion was perfect, for me. And the raids were fun as hell, even on LFR. Oh, and Flex was actually pretty great at that point before they wrecked it by making it a full raid as the new Normal. Being able to find a group to knock out a few bosses in an afternoon was nice, and people weren't requiring a Heroic clear achievement before accepting you for Flex

[m4Zzo928]

MoP was, without a doubt, the best expansion in the entire history of WoW for my playstyle. I never even got the hatred for scenarios, I loved the heck out of those. The only thing in MoP that I felt was dumb was the Proving Grounds requirement for matchmaking. Just let people play the game, ffs. But, other than that, it was top to bottom the best time I have ever had in WoW. Timeless Isle wore out its welcome, eventually, but the pacing for the rest of the expansion was perfect, for me. And the raids were fun as hell, even on LFR. Oh, and Flex was actually pretty great at that point before they wrecked it by making it a full raid as the new Normal. Being able to find a group to knock out a few bosses in an afternoon was nice, and people weren't requiring a Heroic clear achievement before accepting you for Flex

I personally enjoyed very much the farming. I believe after mop is when basically they resorted to the follower quests, which I've never really enjoyed.

[NineSpine]

MoP was, without a doubt, the best expansion in the entire history of WoW for my playstyle. I never even got the hatred for scenarios, I loved the heck out of those. The only thing in MoP that I felt was dumb was the Proving Grounds requirement for matchmaking. Just let people play the game, ffs. But, other than that, it was top to bottom the best time I have ever had in WoW. Timeless Isle wore out its welcome, eventually, but the pacing for the rest of the expansion was perfect, for me. And the raids were fun as hell, even on LFR. Oh, and Flex was actually pretty great at that point before they wrecked it by making it a full raid as the new Normal. Being able to find a group to knock out a few bosses in an afternoon was nice, and people weren't requiring a Heroic clear achievement before accepting you for Flex

I think they worked a bit harder back then to make sure LFR felt like a complete experience.

[Greenmagoo]

MoP was, without a doubt, the best expansion in the entire history of WoW for my playstyle. I never even got the hatred for scenarios, I loved the heck out of those. The only thing in MoP that I felt was dumb was the Proving Grounds requirement for matchmaking. Just let people play the game, ffs. But, other than that, it was top to bottom the best time I have ever had in WoW. Timeless Isle wore out its welcome, eventually, but the pacing for the rest of the expansion was perfect, for me. And the raids were fun as hell, even on LFR. Oh, and Flex was actually pretty great at that point before they wrecked it by making it a full raid as the new Normal. Being able to find a group to knock out a few bosses in an afternoon was nice, and people weren't requiring a Heroic clear achievement before accepting you for Flex

Questing in general is my most hated activity. Stuck around WoW for so long because of co-op. Scenerios was cool and another good method to showcase story while just wasn't something I cared about to grind even as a co-op lover. Dungeons my preferred content was effectively abandoned. GC even admitted this was a mistake that was to be resolved next expansion only for "dailies are mandatory(for raiders)" dev Ion to gut them again the following expansion to focus on raids. LFR and Normal mode was made harder in this elitist view that casual raiders would be happy being shoved into LFR. My realm that had a healthy PuG population throughout Cata ended up getting crushed. LFR just fueled the start of my alcohol addiction.

The farm itself was good while the type of gameplay is one I never got hooked into for long.

The act of having content overall made MoP great while for a player like myself who wanted to do co-op content even as a solo queue or pick up the experience was horrible.

[VMSmith]

I think they worked a bit harder back then to make sure LFR felt like a complete experience.

I think one of my favorite things in MoP LFR was all the people that would say things like "Where's this fucking maze you're talking about!?" and then at some point they suddenly get it and are all "Oh, OH! I see it!" It was just such a fun experience to see people actually learn something in the game itself. The boss fights were nearly all fun without being overly complex, so much so that Throne of Thunder is my all-time favorite raid.

And the gear you got from LFR was good enough that if you wanted to venture into Flex, you absolutely could! And it was also good enough to make you feel powerful out in the actual game world, itself.

- - - Updated - - -

Dungeons my preferred content was effectively abandoned.

Dungeons, especially Heroic dungeons, were IMO at their best in MoP. Enjoyable without being brick-wall difficult (unless you went into Challenge mode, which offered cosmetics rather than gear) and they actually told a story ... unlike SL dungeons which are built for M+ challenge first and "fun" or story tacked on if they can think of something.

[ellieg]

It's amazing how hard you guys work to turn literally any topic into an excuse to do some creepy bragging about how amazing at the game you are and how the whole game would collapse if not for you.

I'm not even really sure what point you are trying to make. I said repeatedly that Blizzard is good at designing challenging content that is fun. Where they fail is designing non-challenging content that is fun. I don't know what any of that has to do with this weird tirade you went on about cookie cutter builds.

What's funny is every thread you're in you're talking about the game collapsing without casuals like you.

And you turn every topic into whiteknighting "casuals" trying to cover up for your lack of skill

[NineSpine]

What's funny is every thread you're in you're talking about the game collapsing without casuals like you.

And you turn every topic into whiteknighting "casuals" trying to cover up for your lack of skill

It's a plain fact that a very small minority does ultra-hardcore content, so when mythic raiders, a completely fringe, niche group of players, acts like they are fundamental to the functioning of the game, it is about as reasonable and rational as someone claiming pet battlers are the backbone of the game.

I don't define myself by my "skill" in a cartoon video game about talking cow ladies. I have more productive things to base my ego on.

[ellieg]

It's a plain fact that a very small minority does ultra-hardcore content, so when mythic raiders, a completely fringe, niche group of players, acts like they are fundamental to the functioning of the game, it is about as reasonable and rational as someone claiming pet battlers are the backbone of the game.

I don't define myself by my "skill" in a cartoon video game about talking cow ladies. I have more productive things to base my ego on.

There you go again lol. Productive things like forum posts abt that video game im sure.

[NineSpine]

There you go again lol. Productive things like forum posts abt that video game im sure.

Let me put it this way: I'm about as impressed by someone's "skill" in warcraft as I am by their post count on a forum, or how many bottle caps they collected.

The irony is that you think OTHER PEOPLE are losers for NOT defining their entire personality around killing internet dragons. It's the equivalent of trying to insult someone by telling them you have the better stamp collection. It's like being condescending because you are good at juggling.