Responding to Player Feedback
The OP has a point.. They did specifically say that they felt it was too much for players to feel that they had to grind reputations for head and shoulder enchants and then they turn around and put the enchants for other slots behind reputations.
Not really. They're different things. The enchantments were absolutely, without-question mandatory, because there was no other way to obtain those particular power increases no matter what else you did in the game.
The current dailies might feel that mandatory to some particularly progression focused players, but it is entirely possible to skip them, and the gear they provide, pretty much entirely and still arrive at the same level of character potency.
No doubt someone will mention profession recipes. Profession recipes have virtually always required some hoop jumping - ranging from RNG raid drops to rep grinds; the best recipes have always required a little something extra.
I have one question: Where's the proof?
I'm not interested in citing the entire massive list directly, but World of Warcraft has a long history of adjustments in response to player feedback. A couple simple recent examples would be raising the Arena and Rated Battleground base point caps or the upcoming changes to the way that Pandaria faction reputation is gained by alternate characters on an account.
When something you feel strongly about hasn't been changed, that doesn't mean that we've dismissed feedback. In fact, sometimes we really like a suggestion, but implementing it doesn't quite fit into the schedule yet, or there are technical or design reasons why it doesn't fit into the game yet. Sometimes, we want to wait til we can implement a more elegant solution. And, of course, sometimes we simply disagree that a particular change is the right course for the game. Nonetheless, in none of these cases is feedback dismissed - it was still taken into account during the decision making process.
You mean the one that just got a huge nerf? Yeah, they nerfed all the dmf cards.
No! Bad! Stop pointing to data-mined content as fact. The change that got picked up was actually an adjustment to Darkmoon Card trinkets for Challenge Mode stat scaling.
When I read this, here's what I am understanding. The enchant on the gear is MORE IMPORTANT than the actual gear itself? So, enchant > gear?
Unfortunately, it seems that you did misinterpret what I wrote. No, the enchantments are not more important than the gear, but they do complement all the gear you'll ever get over the course of that expansion (which is what made those reps essential). In Cataclysm, and previously, you had to have those item enhancements because they would apply over any gear you ever got. In Mists, you can skip rep gear, and move on to better gear, and never miss the reputations you didn't earn in the long run. Not that I'm advocating skipping dailies - there are definitely reasons to do them; just not to the point of fatigue that some choose to. We loosened the cap, and the intention there was to give players some flexibility regarding how they approached them.
While better gear is always helpful, the rep gear is only compelling enough to be called "necessary" relatively early in the progression cycle - and, in truth, it's only "necessary" for the guilds that are competing on that level. On the other hand, it seems that a certain type of player is always running extra miles of one sort or another to be at the cutting edge of content in every expansion, and with every new raid release. I mean, is any tangible, useful reward we provide--regardless of venue--going to seem to be anything less than absolutely mandatory to such a player, unless it is purely cosmetic?
Finally, as Zarhym mentioned elsewhere. We are paying attention and want to do better in the future. We're not in a position to completely re-work the way players interact with dailies on-the-fly, right-this-second. That expectation is unrealistic. We are always interested in learning better ways to approach these design challenges and make fun and compelling content, though.
That's fairly rude and unbecoming of someone who is in the position you are in, Dax. Treating people like an animal by saying, "No! Bad!" and then rubbing their nose in it for jumping the gun is definately not what you should have done. Rather, you should have POLITELY STATED the incorrectness of it and moved on. In this case, both parties here made an error in judgment. Shame to both of you.
It was a tongue in cheek post, though I've re-read it and I still don't find it particularly offensive. Agree to disagree?
This is an interesting example of dissonance in the style of communication that the community wants though. There's a segment of the community that would prefer nothing but perfectly polite, all-the-sharp-edges-grinded-off kind of customer service speak. Meanwhile, there were many players in this thread requesting 'bluntness'--some specifically to the point of rudeness. I think I usually tend somewhere in the middle, with a touch of humor thrown in now and then.
Daxxari, my question for you is, how am I supposed to feel you guys in Blizzard HQ enjoy our feedback if you delete all the posts that consists of feedback?.....
Simply because a thread contains feedback doesn't mean that it abides by our posting guidelines or code of conduct. Constructive feedback should probably be the buzzword, rather than feedback on its own.
We welcome it, we want to read it, and we want to share it with the development teams. You still need to play by the rules while you're here, if you want to be heard.
Those polls only used a few thousand people...
It's true that the forum population represents a relatively small chunk of the overall player base. It's also true that the kind of player that's apt to post on the forums doesn't necessarily represent all of the vast and incredibly diverse World of Warcraft community, but that doesn't mean that the feedback here isn't useful. We do realize that forum goers are often our most invested, passionate players. We appreciate you guys, and what you have to say matters.
That said, election polls and the forums are different in several key ways. Among them--and I don't want to get into how statistics works in detail (especially since I'm not an expert)--but I do know that the forums are what is called a 'self selecting sample', and that trying to derive representative statistics from such a sampling is an excellent way to get skewed results. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Cross-Realm Zones and Gathering Professions
Cross realm zones bring the number of players per zone up to the intended number, the number we had in mind when designing the zone. The competition over mining nodes you're experiencing now should be on a par with those who are on realms with a high population. Your profession levelling speed should be roughly the same speed as everyone else.
While I can understand that you enjoyed being able to level up gathering professions quickly before, it wasn't ever meant to be that easy. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)