Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[Tomana]

The devs have consistently skewed the design to favor the needs of the 1%. This is financially senseless. The mere inclusion of heroic raid modes cannot, IMO, be justified on financial grounds. Ra-Den makes absolutely no sense financially. The tuning up of normal modes cannot be justified. The increase in grindiness is difficult to justify.

I think the issue here is Morhaime being a tech guy rather than a finance guy. Since he basically sold out his company a couple of years after creating it, he clearly demonstrates he's not interested in all that stuff.

[Belisaurio]

The devs have consistently skewed the design to favor the needs of the 1%. This is financially senseless. The mere inclusion of heroic raid modes cannot, IMO, be justified on financial grounds. Ra-Den makes absolutely no sense financially. The tuning up of normal modes cannot be justified. The increase in grindiness is difficult to justify.

Overall, the devs have consistently shown an attitude of "the best players must be catered to, regardless of the overall cost to the game". A finance guy didn't come up with that strategy.

But if that's true, why there are more hardcores and casuals complaining about the accessibility in crescendo since WotLK? I mean, since vanilla the game has changed a lot, and the accessibility become one of their meta. And accessibility is the second card in a sales-market-business company.

[khalltusk]

what the hell is this? lol

Have they copied another GW2 feature and added jumping puzzles?... surely not!

No idea not played GW2. its a treasure room and you can jump up boxes have to avoid guards and traps etc and loot chests of gold.

[Osmeric]

But if that's true, why there are more hardcores and casuals complaining about the accessibility in crescendo since WotLK? I mean, since vanilla the game has changed a lot, and the accessibility become one of their meta. And accessibility is the second card in a sales-market-business company.

My theory is that as more gradations of difficulty have been introduced, it has more accurately classified players by skill, and many have not liked where they ended up in that classification. It's kind of like the PvE equivalent of arena ratings. You will notice those complaining almost always haven't done the harder content.

A finance guy wouldn't have tried this. A finance guy would have told the 1% to take a hike, and allowed the medio-cores to maintain their subscription-preserving illusions.

[Jessicka]

I agree with all of that but I think you can also make a case that they don't change enough fundamentally. If you accept that dungeons and raids are the only content they can produce at lvl 90 at this point then yea absolutely. They constantly swing between ridiculous changes and never ease anybody into it. Naturally this leads to exactly as you described it, player shock. You can say the same thing about constant talent changes and adjustments. Nerfs and buffs nerfs and buffs. It all becomes a bit to much.

By the same token what really has changed? In cata we were doing raids and dungeons and quests. In mists we're doing raids and quests. See I like things like pet battles because while the model isn't anything insanely new it is NEW to the world of warcraft. Like if they added a moba bg, that wouldn't necessarily be a new concept but it is somethign new for warcraft. I understand that apparently innovation is outside of the developers ability but it kinda feels like they've even been phoning it in on the whole rob your competitor of his new innovative idea bit. I'm really curious what they're going to add in the next expansion. I never would have figured pet battles. hmmm

Well, in 5.3 they added the dynamic world event in the Barrens; a knee-jerk about turn in the face of criticism of dailies. The result? Threads on the forums from people asking where the fuck the new faction, hubs and story development quests had gone. The 'new content' was done inside an hour, and made such an impact that it's apparent from this post that you didn't even notice they'd done something new.

The game is questing, dungeons and raids with a side helping of PvP. There isn't much room to deviate from that, because there's a plot to it, and that plot moves people from place to place and the inevitable consequence of that is that when the plot moves on, so do players whos characters progress, and the old zone is abandoned because it doesn't offer the same character progression any longer.

[Xucuroz]

Nothing wrong with exclusive content. The problem is certain players would like large chucks of content, e.g raids to be exclusive. That's bad. There are already plenty of exclusive mounts and titles for those that seek them. Even if some are timed exclusives.

But enough about pet battles.

And yet, loads of people currently on WoW are collecting battle pets. Pets are more sought after now than ever. I mean, i don't personally bother with it either but i still find it silly that you can't accept that theres a large chuck of players playing with that content.

[Deleted]

No idea not played GW2. its a treasure room and you can jump up boxes have to avoid guards and traps etc and loot chests of gold.

Yep and it is a major feature of GW2...

Jumping Puzzles r hidden all over their world as well as in instances to find bonuses. Also used for their seasonal events, the Xmas one was damn hard!

Vids of them r easy to find but heres one to give u an idea. Long vid so just move the slider to find them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEeISA4IOM0

[khalltusk]

Yep and it is a major feature of GW2...

Jumping Puzzles r hidden all over their world as well as in instances to find bonuses. Also used for their seasonal events, the Xmas one was damn hard!

Vids of them r easy to find but heres one to give u an idea. Long vid so just move the slider to find them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEeISA4IOM0

Would not surprise me. Wow/blizzard have been doing it for years. Take whats good about other games and put it into their own. There is another platform quest in the isle of thunder. Quite fun tbh even the original mop areas had some mogu floors that had tile traps on them. I quite enjoy it and certainly would like to see a few more.

[Jessicka]

My theory is that as more gradations of difficulty have been introduced, it has more accurately classified players by skill, and many have not liked where they ended up in that classification. It's kind of like the PvE equivalent of arena ratings. You will notice those complaining almost always haven't done the harder content.

While many haven't liked where they ended up, I think most actually did. We saw in Wrath when we had similar stratification across 10N -> 25N -> 25H guilds, people found their level and enjoyed playing with who they played with because they were at a similar level. The real friction came in Cataclysm where 10N was pushed into 25N levels of difficutly and couldn't cope and 25N was split to 10H as 'dead wood' was shed to push progression with less logistical pressure.

[Belisaurio]

My theory is that as more gradations of difficulty have been introduced, it has more accurately classified players by skill, and many have not liked where they ended up in that classification. It's kind of like the PvE equivalent of arena ratings. You will notice those complaining almost always haven't done the harder content.

A finance guy wouldn't have tried this. A finance guy would have told the 1% to take a hike, and allowed the medio-cores to maintain their subscription-preserving illusions.

Nice point. I've got a theory cinema-related too.
Producers vs artists-design team. Always won producers (money! money!), but the artists-design team always want something more, maybe not "commercial" that can jump over some market-sectors (age, sex, moral, geography, religion, etc...), maybe they want to put more blood (competing with some factors like age or moral), maybe they want to put a lot of monsters (competing with age or sex). I see WoW like that. They've got something that only 1% of their player-base reached, and they changed ignoring design, and tried with a tool: another mode.With the point of view of a designer, seems a little strange that they created a tool and not tried to change the difficult from their designs (like WotLK, ignoring the hard-normal modes and the 10/25 raids).

Note: "market-sector" meaning the different factors of potential client: sex (girls/boys), age (teen, younger, old, etc...), and that type of things. I don't know the right word in english sorry.

[Plutarch78]

The OP probably doesn't have a job or any real life commitments. Putting in absurd amounts of time in WoW is unhealthy. Blizzard realized this and made the necessary changes.

Sick and tired of the notion that vanilla/BC was the golden age.

[Destruktion]

Still in MoP I think we will see more raid bosses than any other xpack, we saw the death of dungeons.
Casual players now can only raid for any reasonable character progression what so ever. The time commitment required to keep current is much higher which favors the hardcore dedicated player more than the casual player. We also saw the death of alts this xpack.

The time commitment is higher, yes, but that's a good thing because it keeps players invested in the game longer. Sure, now players won't have the time to manage all of their 10+ alts, but let's face it: if a game requires you to make 10 different characters and complete the same tasks 10 different times to keep you occupied, that's a game with little longevity, and is probably not very good.

"The death of dungeons"...
Care to elaborate?

How did the casual crowd win? They got raids they are unable to do except for lfr. Normal is now tuned higher and less people are able to do it. Both normal and heroic are much more exclusive then they have been and with not being nerfed remains firmly closed against the casual players. Blizzard has said that it's the casual players that have been suffering during this expansion and leaving. If they are the ones winning in this debate, why is it you think they are leaving in the numbers they are leaving in?

Raiding has always been somewhat exclusive and not done by a majority of the player base. Now it's even more exclusive then it has been and even fewer people are even attempting to take part in it. This may please a certain player base but that player base is much smaller then the one it is angering. Flex raiding is being added to try to please the player base that had content for them taken away with the new model. It would of been nice had they done it at the start of the expansion or left normal alone. At this point I think flex will do little to nothing due to the fact that many of the players who it's designed for already left.

First of all, people are leaving WoW for any number of reasons.
Second of all, raiding is only a very small albeit bloated part of this game. It was Blizzard's choice to focus on it, to their own peril it seems.

This isn't a mystery. They are a business, and their revenue depends on maintaining subscriptions. If 75% of the unsubscribers list excessive difficulty as their reason for leaving Blizzard would be stupid to maintain the high difficulty level. It's basic business. Blizzard doesn't exist to cater exclusively to your needs. They exist to make money, and that means going with what the majority wants.

There is no way to know what the majority "wants." Blizzard makes decisions based on what people actually do.
The problem is when they start letting the players drive from the backseat. It's a shitty idea for a business who wants to make money off of a quality product to let customers who have no idea what they're doing try and design the game.

0 Heroic Dungeons since MoP was first released. If that's winning I'd hate to see what losing would have been like.

Is that your only measure of casual-friendly content?

[khalltusk]

The time commitment is higher, yes, but that's a good thing because it keeps players invested in the game longer. Sure, now players won't have the time to manage all of their 10+ alts, but let's face it: if a game requires you to make 10 different characters and complete the same tasks 10 different times to keep you occupied, that's a game with little longevity, and is probably not very good.

"The death of dungeons"...
Care to elaborate?



First of all, people are leaving WoW for any number of reasons.
Second of all, raiding is only a very small albeit bloated part of this game. It was Blizzard's choice to focus on it, to their own peril it seems.



There is no way to know what the majority "wants." Blizzard makes decisions based on what people actually do.
The problem is when they start letting the players drive from the backseat. It's a shitty idea for a business who wants to make money off of a quality product to let customers who have no idea what they're doing try and design the game.



Is that your only measure of casual-friendly content?

To be fair I would like to see some more 5man content. This will be the only expansion with out an addtional 5man being added.

TBC had 1 additional 5man, Wrath had 4, Cata had 5. Vanilla had DM added (3 wings) and Maurodon added as well I think. I know that they said it competes with raid content. But perhaps with the Titan team joining the wow main team we might see a few more 5mans in the near future after the next expac?

[Destruktion]

To be fair I would like to see some more 5man content. This will be the only expansion with out an addtional 5man being added.

TBC had 1 additional 5man, Wrath had 4, Cata had 5. Vanilla had DM added (3 wings) and Maurodon added as well I think. I know that they said it competes with raid content. But perhaps with the Titan team joining the wow main team we might see a few more 5mans in the near future after the next expac?

Perhaps.
I personally think that raid content has been getting far too much focus, especially at the expense of dungeons. I think with raids it would make more sense, due to their high development cost, to have a "quantity > quality" focus rather than the converse.

[Ronduwil]

Yeah, but they are winning the finance guys :S

Sorry for my grammar, I only write in english here. But I don't see what mistake I've done.

I don't normally call out grammar, but since it's already been called out and you've professed an ignorance of the mistake you made (understandable since English is not your native language) I'll explain so that you understand where the confusion comes from.

Your sentence is structured with a subject (the noun that's performing the action), a verb (the action), and a direct object (the recipient of the action). In your sentence:

• the subject is "They"
• the verb is "are winning"
• the direct object is "the finance guys"

The way it's phrased your sentence implies that some ambiguous entities (they) are scoring a victory over the finance guys when in fact you meant to say, "The finance guys are winning." My mother, whose primary language is Spanish, makes that same error in sentence structure all the time, so I could tell what you meant right off. Different languages are structured differently is all.

---------- Post added 2013-06-28 at 10:03 AM ----------

Well, in 5.3 they added the dynamic world event in the Barrens; a knee-jerk about turn in the face of criticism of dailies. The result? Threads on the forums from people asking where the fuck the new faction, hubs and story development quests had gone. The 'new content' was done inside an hour, and made such an impact that it's apparent from this post that you didn't even notice they'd done something new.

Sometimes it feels like there's a troll working on Blizzard's design team. A reasonable designer would say, "Oh, I guess people don't like having 30 useful dailies available to them at one time. How about we scale it back to 5 or 10?" Instead they generalize it to, "Oh, I guess people don't like dailies. We'll just get rid of them."

---------- Post added 2013-06-28 at 10:14 AM ----------

There is no way to know what the majority "wants."

However, there is a way to tell why most players are leaving. Blizzard provides a feedback box that players can leave comments in as they go. Contrary to commonly expressed belief, I don't think that they're arbitrarily nerfing everything simply because casuals "whine" about it.

Blizzard makes decisions based on what people actually do.

Exactly. That's why when a large percentage of unsubscribers express that the remaining content requires too much commitment from them they have to find ways of providing content that requires less commitment.

Is that your only measure of casual-friendly content?

As a healer, that was pretty much the only thing I could do without having to commit a significant chunk of my time on a regular basis. Dailies don't require healers. Scenarios don't require healers. Brawler's guild isn't healer friendly. If I want to do Pet Battles I'll just play through the many Pokemon games that we have for our Game Cube, Wii, GB Advance, and DS. I won't have to pay $15 a month to play those. What's left for me? LFR (pseudo-raiding) and raiding. If you think LFR is an exciting activity for casuals think again. Your perception of a victory for casuals only applies if LFR was in response to casuals' demand for access to raiding. However, since it was actually a booby prize to compensate for the fact that most of the focus nowadays is on putting out raids it's not really a victory.

I personally think that raid content has been getting far too much focus, especially at the expense of dungeons. I think with raids it would make more sense, due to their high development cost, to have a "quantity > quality" focus rather than the converse.

Exactly. That's the very reason that I believe casuals lost the fight.

[Jessicka]

Sometimes it feels like there's a troll working on Blizzard's design team. A reasonable designer would say, "Oh, I guess people don't like having 30 useful dailies available to them at one time. How about we scale it back to 5 or 10?" Instead they generalize it to, "Oh, I guess people don't like dailies. We'll just get rid of them."

Which is my point; this then annoys all the people who were happy, quietly getting on with their dailies, unlocking the new quests as their reputation increased and seeing the story unfold. That was something I thought worked well with the Golden Lotus set, and even better with 5.1 content - so much so it spurred me on in levelling my Horde to see their story. Then comes 5.3, I'm expecting a nice lead in story to the Siege of Orgrimmar, the final tier, the SIEGE ON THE FUCKING ORC, no, HORDE CAPITAL, and what do we get? 30 seconds with a mechanical cat and collecting some wood for Vol'jin? Fucking seriously? A willful, and huge anticlimax because some guys on a forum complained about doing some quests, quests being the entire centrepoint of the game since level 1, in an RPG?

The 'change' GC talks about as the biggest factor in people leaving must surely be these huge pendulum swing responses to the latest echo chamber of QQ.

[Orange Joe]

what the hell is this? lol

Have they copied another GW2 feature and added jumping puzzles?... surely not!

GW2 invented jumping puzzles? You sure you want to stick with that claim? Hell minecraft had it before GW2

[DrSteveBrule]

Nothing wrong with exclusive content. The problem is certain players would like large chucks of content, e.g raids to be exclusive. That's bad. There are already plenty of exclusive mounts and titles for those that seek them. Even if some are timed exclusives.

The thing is, once you've killed the time commitment and challenge of a raid it's not a large chunk of content anymore, it's consumed so fast and leaves you with nothing to think about other than "hope RNG doesn't fuck me this week" because that's all there is the to think about.

Obviously LFR has failed in that respect and that's why they are working on Flex raid.

But it could easily be another shitfest like LFR depending on the difficulty and self loot rolls.
It frankly doesn't matter HOW you see the content if you can see it all in one day without use of keybinds.

[Jessicka]

GW2 invented jumping puzzles? You sure you want to stick with that claim? Hell minecraft had it before GW2

Pretty sure Mario had it on NES before that. I doubt it was original even then.

[Orange Joe]

Pretty sure Mario had it on NES before that. I doubt it was original even then.

Wasn't really trying to credit minecraft with jumping puzzles.