Why Is Blizzard Always At War With The Playerbase!?

[Relapses]

I haven't played Shadowlands since the first patch, I'm playing classic. I'm talking about issues that have occurred over a much larger time period. Examples would be:

MOP dailies
Running months of LFR on alts for legendary catch up in MoP and WoD
The Legiondary grind (it was waaay too slow if you didn't mindlessly grind)
All the pathfinder achieves
When I resubbed in Nyalotha and spent weeks doing dailies in Nazjatar and the other place for dailies to get essences

You really have to wonder why you're complaining about game design choices that Blizzard has intentionally moved away from... do you want Blizzard to just go back in time and erase the bad experiences you had? The fact that literally none of the problems you described exist in the current version of the game kind of proves that they do, in fact, listen to feedback.

[Aucald]

Its because that single issue has extreme effects. By making these alternative power systems they inflict a burden onto every other element of the game. From dungeons to raids to pvp everything now has to be scaled around this system that shouldn't of been allowed to crawl out of a designer's boardroom.

We return to my initial post. You can not provide effective feedback on a game you barely understand. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy it but if you are listened to in any capacity you will inflict more harm then good and it will be painfully obvious to those with an understanding of the game.

Here is an easy example. The crafting revamp is gonna be dogshit. It's going to fail spectacularly at its intended purpose and will either be dropped or utterly reworked by the second patch. It's clear to everyone at a certain level of play why this is doomed ( has to do with how material is gathered alongside the min maxing culture) yet it's going to the new island expeditions of DF.

The most successful way to make a game like wow is to develop for the higher end... roughly heroic raids and mythic 15s then consult with top players to add on to that to make mythic.

Anything else all you need do is strip out mechanics.

You've yet to explain how or why alternative power systems, in your words, "inflict a burden onto every other element of the game?" What are they doing to do that, and how exactly does that differ from the gear treadmill that's always been part and parcel of progression in WoW? You make a lot of these kinds of arguments, with colorful language and harsh invective but little to no essential detail, which makes your argument basically boil down to "I didn't like this and it should be removed," and then you telescope yourself into a constructed public that agrees wholeheartedly with you. It's also perfectly possible to fully understand the game and not play at an end-game level. I do that myself, as a former hardcore raider who basically gave up the rat race because real-life obligations no longer leave me with the time to devote static evenings to the pursuit. That doesn't mean I don't know my shit - I simply choose not to play at that level anymore. There are a *lot* of people who fall into my general cross-section, too; I'm in a guild full of them, and I know even more.

As for the new profession system in DF, well, it can't really be worse than the current incarnation of professions, can it? Aside from the generation of template items for Legendaries every profession in WoW is just about useless in SL. I don't know how well this new design will work myself, either; but I'm glad to see them finally iterating on it and trying to do something new with it. Not every new development works great out of the gate - it takes some iteration and time to get it completely right.

I mean...devils advocate raiders rarely play for gear. They will focus in on a item they need for their class to function ( jailers gavel, vein ripper, etc) but overall it would be a lot healthier for the game if you got a full mythic set on clearing all 15s.

Only real friction would be is if it shared visuals. Change that and it would be supported.

I won't really speak on pvp since pvp having gear at all is already garbage design.

Really? I know when I raided gear was pretty much paramount and necessary to move from tier to tier, boss to boss, and so on. WoW's raids tend to be an internal uphill gradient, and without sufficient gearing, you're going to quickly hit stumbling blocks that you can't power through as the math is simply far too against you. Mind you, it's not as bad as it once was back in WoW's earliest days when gearing had hard checks like with resistance requirements or threshold guardians like Patchwerk, but those walls are still there, and it's only the rarest of the rare players who can surmount them in substandard gear. Shit like DKP and loot councils wouldn't exist if raiders didn't play for gear.

Your later comments seem to imply you don't even like the concept of gear to begin with, and would rather everyone be on a static plane and the entire game be based entirely on a player's skill like in an FPS. That's fine, really, but you're talking about an entirely different genre of game - the game you seem to be looking for isn't WoW, and isn't really an RPG (MMO or otherwise).

[Zero Wing]

What is this in reference too? Maybe I'm completely out of the loop, but I've never heard of this before.

The theory is that Jeff Kaplan and Alex Afrasiabi, who were Everquest players who joined WoW development late in the Vanilla development cycle, had a problem with powerful hybrid classes and worked to get Paladins (among others) nerfed. At one time it sounded like a reasonable enough theory, and it still might be true; however, it's worth noting that Kevin Jordan claims to have been essentially the sole designer of class skills and talents from very early Vanilla development all the way through WotLK. What is known with certainty is that Afrasiabi mocked Paladins for being a class for beginners live on stage during the first Blizzcon.

[FelPlague]

I haven't played Shadowlands since the first patch, I'm playing classic. I'm talking about issues that have occurred over a much larger time period. Examples would be:

MOP dailies
Running months of LFR on alts for legendary catch up in MoP and WoD
The Legiondary grind (it was waaay too slow if you didn't mindlessly grind)
All the pathfinder achieves
When I resubbed in Nyalotha and spent weeks doing dailies in Nazjatar and the other place for dailies to get essences

You didnt need to do mop dailies though... you could farm rep tokens off rares...

show me how you can get classic legendaries without raiding?

Same above again

Ok sure pathfinder, but pathfinder has been gone for awhile now...

you could have done anything to get essences, you didnt need to do nazjatar or other dailies.

[Alvito]

Seriously, at this point, I just don't understand the logic behind some of the changes that they implement (or revert).

Someone on the official forums put it perfectly that there are many easy wins they could implement that wouldn't negatively impact the player base:

• I̶l̶l̶u̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ o̶n̶ a̶r̶t̶i̶f̶a̶c̶t̶s̶ (reverted)
• LFR Slimecat
  
• NO PATHFINDER
• Meaningful gear progression in open-world content that scales with new M+ and raiding seasons. Zereth Mortis gear caps somewhere around 250 ILV, M+ offers 304 from the vault, and raiding offers 311 on Mythic - let's reduce that gap by increasing ZM gear ILV to 275 at least.
• Artificial time gating for unlocking current expansion allied races (reputation grinds) - why not simply allow us to unlock them after finishing the story? You decided to allow that with past allied races anyways.

These are just a small list of things that I can't wrap my mind around.

Why is it that in a game that depends so heavily on the consumer supporting it, the developers don't at least acknowledge that their philosophies are archaic and move towards making meaningful changes?

I'm a bit jaded; at the very least, I feel we are entitled to some visibility from them.

None of that is being at war with the player base. In many ways they protect players from themselves. Giving away items until all items are devalued doesn't help anybody.

[Relapses]

Because I read the op, and the things he complained about - lack of open world progression because the ilvl is way too low, and the existence of pathfinder, both seem to fit within this paradigm of things that they could harmlessly implement to improve the game because they provide a big benefit to one group of players without really harming any others. Letting people get heroic raid gear from world content via the vault or, more preferably, something like valor, would be harmless - that's again something that effectively existed in wrath. I'm not an open world player, but I get it - if you like that content, it must frustrate you to no end that it's completely unrewarding.

And my perception of the situation is they reluctantly move away from it. The history of the past few expansions has been:

Devs: Here's a new system! You'll love it!
Players: We hate all systems!
Devs: New expansion, new system, you'll love it, it fixes the last one!
Players: We hate all systems!

...Repeat.

They aren't developing these systems in spite of the playerbase. They're making them specifically because the playerbase asks for things like this. Constantly framing things as if Blizzard went out of their way to make the game worse is just a bitter, cynical way to discuss game development and it does very little to actually provide any actionable feedback for the developers to build upon. It's a way to seek validation for a negative opinion instead of actually, y'know, talking about ways to improve things.

[Orange Joe]

No but I think a 25 is past what you can be carried in or beat without a very firm grasp of game mechanics.

I still haven't gotten a straight answer why asking the most ignorant part of the player base for design notes is a positive. Do we really need feedback from hunter pet dmg timmy and "omg nerf pallies bubble is op they are UnKiLlable" Tommy?

Why is there such a negative reaction to the idea that better feedback comes from better players? Every other aspect of life works this way.

Is it a ego thing?

http://www2.humboldt.edu/act/HTML/te...acy6/6.8a.html

When you want an honest discussion I'm sure someone will have it with you. Til then have fun with your strawmen and fallacies.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Seriously, at this point, I just don't understand the logic behind some of the changes that they implement (or revert).

Someone on the official forums put it perfectly that there are many easy wins they could implement that wouldn't negatively impact the player base:

• I̶l̶l̶u̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ o̶n̶ a̶r̶t̶i̶f̶a̶c̶t̶s̶ (reverted)
• LFR Slimecat
  
• NO PATHFINDER
• Meaningful gear progression in open-world content that scales with new M+ and raiding seasons. Zereth Mortis gear caps somewhere around 250 ILV, M+ offers 304 from the vault, and raiding offers 311 on Mythic - let's reduce that gap by increasing ZM gear ILV to 275 at least.
• Artificial time gating for unlocking current expansion allied races (reputation grinds) - why not simply allow us to unlock them after finishing the story? You decided to allow that with past allied races anyways.

These are just a small list of things that I can't wrap my mind around.

Why is it that in a game that depends so heavily on the consumer supporting it, the developers don't at least acknowledge that their philosophies are archaic and move towards making meaningful changes?

I'm a bit jaded; at the very least, I feel we are entitled to some visibility from them.

Because those players talked themselves into thinking that they're in a war. It never ends because they're the only ones fighting.

[Hambo94]

Sorry, but someone has to say this: That is a complete load of hogwash. And just because it's popular for other people to echo this statement as fact does not make it true or something that people like you should be repeating ad nauseum.

Of course it is true that publicly listed companies tend to try to be a profitable as possible. And in many cases this can lead to them making decisions that drive short-term profit of long-term sustainability, but it is certainly not mandated by any law. And the idea that because a company is publicly listed, they are guaranteed to do this sort of thing is also preposterous.

Then you clearly need to go do some research. Google "Business judgement rule" and come back and say its hogwash. Its absolutely not. It by definition dictates that executives are acting in the interest of the shareholder which by definition means in the interest of making profits and not spending unnecessary money that eat into profits. In the case of Blizzard, it means they're not going to give us extra content, and they're going to give us MVP. If they make an expansion with all the bells and whistles, and it costs them 2x the money to create, then the shareholders can legally argue that the executives arent acting in their interest and are wasting money. Its just a fact.

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Blizzard Entertainment has never been publicly traded themselves, and if you're counting their parent company, then Blizzard Entertainment has ALWAYS been publicly traded, they changed names from Chaos Studios to Blizzard Entertainment when they were bought by a publicly traded Development company, and at this point they'd only made Rock n Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. This whole fantasy of "The games only went bad when they went public" is a load of horseshit that is purely parroted to try and pretend there's an "old Blizzard" who did things better.

Respectfully, thats not how it works. Steam is an example of a company that has been traded around, but is private. Gabe Newell is a majority shareholder, and then other shares are split around a significant number of other 'investors' but the company remains private despite having shares split up to different people/groups.

We're not talking about Blizzard taking on private investment in the past in a similar fashion to Steam. For the longest time the founders were majority shareholders but gave up stakes to take on investment. Almost every single studio does this. We're talking about the point at which Blizzard/Parent was floated on the public stock exchange, at which point they are very much a publicly owned company.

[Celista]

Due to the Believe they know better than the playerbase...this has been proven wrong by customers since the release of cataclysm.

Also you several group of players with vastly different goals and pandering to everyone is very hard.

That's what I used to think, but my mind was changed during Cataclysm beta. The beta forums were full of complaints about healers (particularly priest healing), all of which were valid. There were numerous concerns but one primary one was that priest mana regen was so low that healers felt forced to take a certain talent, as it was the only talent that provided a notable amount of regen.

The developer responded to these claims by nerfing that talent into the ground. He openly stated this in the forum comments. Healers ended up being a shitshow upon Cataclysm release and Blizzard ended up implementing a ton of changes within the first few months of the game. Damage was done though and for what? All because some developer's ego felt threatened.

I'll never forget that, as it said a lot about the mentality of employees back then.

[Hambo94]

Question, what content in shadowlands do you not like that you can't just do something else to gain the items needed?

Covenants? You want the best raiding ability, then pvp, then m+? Tough, they're all different. Pretty major flaw that was pointed out by hundreds of thousands of players for you know, months, and was ignored.

[FelPlague]

Covenants? You want the best raiding ability, then pvp, then m+? Tough, they're all different. Pretty major flaw that was pointed out by hundreds of thousands of players for you know, months, and was ignored.

you dont have to "do" covenants, that is like saying they force you to "do' factions cause you have to pick a faction...

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That's what I used to think, but my mind was changed during Cataclysm beta. The beta forums were full of complaints about healers (particularly priest healing), all of which were valid. There were numerous concerns but one primary one was that priest mana regen was so low that healers felt forced to take a certain talent, as it was the only talent that provided a notable amount of regen.

The developer responded to these claims by nerfing that talent into the ground. He openly stated this in the forum comments. Healers ended up being a shitshow upon Cataclysm release and Blizzard ended up implementing a ton of changes within the first few months of the game. Damage was done though and for what? All because some developer's ego felt threatened.

I'll never forget that, as it said a lot about the mentality of employees back then.

https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic...ta-blizz-post/
there is a lot here, can you point to that for me, cause i cant be bothered to read through it all for the "nerfing it to the ground out of spite"
or if you have a link ot the bluepost if it is not in here that would be good to see actually.

[Celista]

https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic...ta-blizz-post/
there is a lot here, can you point to that for me, cause i cant be bothered to read through it all for the "nerfing it to the ground out of spite"
or if you have a link ot the bluepost if it is not in here that would be good to see actually.

It was over a decade ago and as you know, the old forums are no longer with us. #465 looks familiar but I can't guarantee it was in the thread in question. The post I mentioned is not listed here.

The employee was Ghostcrawler though. Lol that guy. I didn't have a problem with him other than what I mentioned, which said a lot.

The listed posts support my claim as to what happened, even if the post I mentioned isn't listed here.

[Magnificent Madmartegan]

Ever think maybe its the player base that's "at war" with Blizzard. I mean, my god, there's so many different desires or wants in WoW that whenever they answer one there's 50% or more of the player base that bitches about said change, so then blizzard changes something else that a different group was bitching about and 50% or more of the player base bitches about that. I'm sorry but all the stuff you listed on the initial post is all stuff that isn't really worth complaining about to begin with. Enchant mogs not on Legendaries makes sense, they each have their own unique art and some even have a glow already on the weapon, why would they want to hide the art they did? The slime cat mount.... boo hoo!!! you don't get one mount out of the thousands in the game because YOU don't want to put the effort into doing what's needed for it?!?! How is that blizzards fault? I can keep going on and on about the stupid stuff that so many people complain about but its really not worth any more time than it took me to write this!!

[Zyrinx]

I'm with you, OP. Easy wins that negatively affect no one.

[Celement]

You've yet to explain how or why alternative power systems, in your words, "inflict a burden onto every other element of the game?" What are they doing to do that, and how exactly does that differ from the gear treadmill that's always been part and parcel of progression in WoW? You make a lot of these kinds of arguments, with colorful language and harsh invective but little to no essential detail, which makes your argument basically boil down to "I didn't like this and it should be removed," and then you telescope yourself into a constructed public that agrees wholeheartedly with you. It's also perfectly possible to fully understand the game and not play at an end-game level. I do that myself, as a former hardcore raider who basically gave up the rat race because real-life obligations no longer leave me with the time to devote static evenings to the pursuit. That doesn't mean I don't know my shit - I simply choose not to play at that level anymore. There are a *lot* of people who fall into my general cross-section, too; I'm in a guild full of them, and I know even more.

As for the new profession system in DF, well, it can't really be worse than the current incarnation of professions, can it? Aside from the generation of template items for Legendaries every profession in WoW is just about useless in SL. I don't know how well this new design will work myself, either; but I'm glad to see them finally iterating on it and trying to do something new with it. Not every new development works great out of the gate - it takes some iteration and time to get it completely right.



Really? I know when I raided gear was pretty much paramount and necessary to move from tier to tier, boss to boss, and so on. WoW's raids tend to be an internal uphill gradient, and without sufficient gearing, you're going to quickly hit stumbling blocks that you can't power through as the math is simply far too against you. Mind you, it's not as bad as it once was back in WoW's earliest days when gearing had hard checks like with resistance requirements or threshold guardians like Patchwerk, but those walls are still there, and it's only the rarest of the rare players who can surmount them in substandard gear. Shit like DKP and loot councils wouldn't exist if raiders didn't play for gear.

Your later comments seem to imply you don't even like the concept of gear to begin with, and would rather everyone be on a static plane and the entire game be based entirely on a player's skill like in an FPS. That's fine, really, but you're talking about an entirely different genre of game - the game you seem to be looking for isn't WoW, and isn't really an RPG (MMO or otherwise).

It's hard to describe because im a shitty teacher and you are basically asking me to explain how I know there is oxygen without seeing it. Adding on a random grind system obviously increases time spent outside of activities people enjoy making some metter or dumbass conduits go up.

If gear mattered a lot to your progression I'm guessing you stopped raiding before legion? Its not a snub just after that expansion it got kinda rare for people to even be aware of what gear they had beyond the stats on it.

The importance of gear really took a plunge with mythic plus. Unless you are pushing 2/3 of mythic on the first week of unlock you wont hit a gear check these days.

[Hambo94]

you dont have to "do" covenants, that is like saying they force you to "do' factions cause you have to pick a faction...

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https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic...ta-blizz-post/
there is a lot here, can you point to that for me, cause i cant be bothered to read through it all for the "nerfing it to the ground out of spite"
or if you have a link ot the bluepost if it is not in here that would be good to see actually.

You dont have to "do" anything in a game, but to assume that people dont want to be completionists/min-maxers in an RPG game is just outright incompetent. Tying together completely unrelated activities in an RPG is just bad design.

I didnt want anything to do with the factions outside of cosmetic stuff that I would have done at my own pace. I do however want to raid, pvp and m+ and min/max all of it, thats where I get my enjoyment out of the end game content, and blizzard stuffed that, so I didnt play SL. Its super simple.

For years and years Blizzard have massively failed to understand the psychological connection between gamers and content. Its been proven a million times in the history of gaming, that players will do whatever it takes to be more efficient at the expense of their own enjoyment. Yes, this means they will want to fly to save time at the expense of the open world, if you gave wow players quick travel and then try to take it away you'd get an identical result. Yes this means that if you tie something related to player power to fucking pet battles a significant amount of players who dont enjoy pet battles will force themselves to do it just to get the rewards, because people dont want to fall behind, and people dont want to miss out.

Covenants should never have been tied to player power and it is absolutely glaringly obvious to anyone with a brain inside their skull that has any sort of analytical brain processing power. They should have been kept as flavours to the story, to cosmetics, mounts, transmog, spell effects, toys, items that can be used in the world outside of raids, and crammed full of content in that sense. Add spells for all I care, but disable them in ALL end game content if you cant have access to all. Equally, if you insist on having the abilities all of the time, make them an 'activatable' talent row inside instances (pvp/m+/raiding) so that they can be swapped on the fly 'temporarily' for that specific instance.

Instead they forced every single player to do it one way, and that way brought with it enormous limitations.

Theres literally one million ways they could do it right, and they somehow managed to find the only way to do it wrong and its obvious.

[Aucald]

It's hard to describe because in a shitty teacher and you are basically asking me to explain how I know there is oxygen without seeing it. Adding on a random grind system obviously increases time spent outside of activities people enjoy making some metter or dumbass conduits go up.

And that basically comes across as "I don't know how to explain my argument, so I'm just going to throw shade at you in lieu of actually doing so." All of WoW is essentially making numbers and statistics go up at a fundamental level, all you're doing is saying you don't like the color of the numbers or the font they're using. Which is fine as a complaint, I suppose, but it matters a whole lot less than your vehemence indicates.

If gear mattered a lot to your progression I'm guessing you stopped raiding before legion? Its not a snub just after that expansion it got kinda rare for people to even be aware of what gear they had beyond the stats on it.

The importance of gear really took a plunge with mythic plus. Unless you are pushing 2/3 of mythic on the first week of unlock you wont hit a gear check these days.

I stopped raiding seriously in WoD, though I still dipped my toes into the occasional normal and heroic raids in Legion as well as BfA. I'm not really sure what you mean by "what gear they had beyond the stats on it" since the stats on your gear, as well as any procs or bonuses it has, is fundamentally what gear *is*. Unless you're trying to say that bonuses and procs are all that mattered, to which I'd have to say I doubt either your skill at the game or your overall level of experience. As I said previously, the prevalence of hard gear checks has decreased since WoW's early days, but an anecdotal experience is anecdotal, both for you and for me. My experience post-TBC doesn't mirror yours very much, in what seems like a lot of ways.

[FelPlague]

It was over a decade ago and as you know, the old forums are no longer with us. #465 looks familiar but I can't guarantee it was in the thread in question. The post I mentioned is not listed here.

The employee was Ghostcrawler though. Lol that guy. I didn't have a problem with him other than what I mentioned, which said a lot.

The listed posts support my claim as to what happened, even if the post I mentioned isn't listed here.

even if the forums are not there the blue tracker keeps a perpetual archive of all posts. those ones are from 13 years ago to be exact.

[rrayy]

Covenants? You want the best raiding ability, then pvp, then m+? Tough, they're all different. Pretty major flaw that was pointed out by hundreds of thousands of players for you know, months, and was ignored.

Link proving 100's of thousands of players complained. That is a massive over-exaggeration and I can easily guarantee it was far less than that. Also Not caving to player whining does not = ignoring you. They disagree with you.

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Ever think maybe its the player base that's "at war" with Blizzard. I mean, my god, there's so many different desires or wants in WoW that whenever they answer one there's 50% or more of the player base that bitches about said change, so then blizzard changes something else that a different group was bitching about and 50% or more of the player base bitches about that. I'm sorry but all the stuff you listed on the initial post is all stuff that isn't really worth complaining about to begin with. Enchant mogs not on Legendaries makes sense, they each have their own unique art and some even have a glow already on the weapon, why would they want to hide the art they did? The slime cat mount.... boo hoo!!! you don't get one mount out of the thousands in the game because YOU don't want to put the effort into doing what's needed for it?!?! How is that blizzards fault? I can keep going on and on about the stupid stuff that so many people complain about but its really not worth any more time than it took me to write this!!

IT is exactly that. players are at war because Blizzard will not give them everything they want. They don't care about the other players who want different things. They want the game catered solely to themselves because they believe they are the only ones who know how to make the game great. It's entitlement that is getting worse in players.