Is it time for tiered content to return?

[Tharkkun]

"when its clearly bleeding subs and has been for a long time minus new expansion hype."

If it was staying high past the first month it would be added back into the report to investors.

Game has peaked twice in the start of WoD and Legion, losing more than half the player base for the rest of the expansion isn't doing something right....

No, it wouldn't. No games report subscription numbers anymore. Blizzard was the last to stop doing so. They report monthly active users. Especially when there's a a few dozen F2P games that don't charge subs.

MAU's can show the same numbers you're looking for. Quarterly profit shows how much revenue you earn.

Since there's no subs being reported unless you're going through the MAU's for WoW it's your opinion that subs dropped so drastically when Blizzard has countered this.

[Deleted]

Some good points inhere!

Personally I do think the RNG is killing the game - Even though it exactly what Blizzard wants, keep us playing.
As people said, getting lucky does not feel rewarding.. It feels nice fora day or two, but earning your gear on the other hand, will grant you the most satisfaction.

OT: I definitely think it's time to go back and see what people liked in the earlier stages of the game.. And yes, maybe even remove LFR and make HC dungeons harder/more rewarding to compensate the gap.

[A Blue Smurf]

Lots of arguing for points here and not a whole lot of actual discussion on the concepts and schematics of them.

As a few people have already said here, once the genie (LFR) is out of the bottle it becomes very hard to put back in - so I wouldn't try.

A few people have also raised the question of gameplay depth, crafting, the prevalence of RNG in the current system etc. Very valid points in my honest opinion. The game as it stands is highly saturated with RNG, with multiple sets of RNG on a single item in addition to the layers that lead to it. It's a good carrot system... It's also more akin to gambling than gaming. I personally don't like the lengths that it has gone to but I understand and agree with the underlying concept, RNG can be fun and very rewarding.

There's plenty of good elements in the current system and even in past systems, the unfortunate situation is that I believe, currently, the sum of parts is of lesser value than the parts themselves.

Personally, if anything were to change, I'd like to see something along the following:

LFR:
Should present everyone with an opportunity to see the story finales as they happen, however it needs to be rewarding in the sense that this in a gear progressive game and not a storyline game. With that in mind;

LFR becomes a "Story Scenario" similar to that of the Battle of the Undercity for the Wrathgate event. You should be able to complete it solo and be accompanied by the relevant lore NPCs and an entourage that would allow to you complete it. You should also be able to queue for it in the same manner as current. The difficulty should remain the same and the only difference between solo and queuing is the amount of time taken to complete it (Solo would be significantly slower but more immersive as a result).

Loot-wise each wing should offer a cache containing, at most, 1 item per boss drawn from the wings collective loot table. This would be awarded weekly. Quest items and crafting materials should also drop.
Crafting should be incorporated into this by using the LFR loot as a basis for upgrading gear through crafting so that people have the opportunity to progress gear wise out of LFR if they choose to. This process should be relatively slow in comparison to raising higher difficulties.

Warforging/Titanforging should upgrade LFR gear to Normal gear.

Normal/Heroic:

Should be merged following the Ulduar model. Nothing else should change. Flex sizing should remain.

Warforging/Titanforging should upgrade Normal to Heroic and Heroic to Mythic.

Mythic:

Normal/Heroic should not be required to participate in Mythic, only make mythic easier.
Nothing else should change.

Mythic gear should not Warforge/Titanforge, however there should be recipes that drop at mythic level that would allow the opportunity to upgrade Mythic gear in the same manner as Warforging/Titanforging via crafting.

[Flutterguy]

Why are people pretending RNG was introduced in BfA? It's been part of the game since the beginning.

[Trbn]

No, it wouldn't. No games report subscription numbers anymore. Blizzard was the last to stop doing so. They report monthly active users. Especially when there's a a few dozen F2P games that don't charge subs.

MAU's can show the same numbers you're looking for. Quarterly profit shows how much revenue you earn.

Since there's no subs being reported unless you're going through the MAU's for WoW it's your opinion that subs dropped so drastically when Blizzard has countered this.

I dunno what they countered but a lot of realms are desert. auction lots number speaks well

[Dusty tome]

I keep debating whether there should be different servers. My argument would be to have two difficulty levels, one for heroic and mythic, the other for normal and lfr.

Could make things a LOT better if the game was done that way.

I don't know if it would change much with current wow... call me cynical but I think all the bad players would roll on the harder server then complain.

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Why are people pretending RNG was introduced in BfA? It's been part of the game since the beginning.

There is rng then there is RNG. Azerite broke the skinner boxes back and now people releaized that having the boss having just one version of a item is better then a dozen versions of the item.

[Cardian]

I think so. I’ve been a casual scrub at various times over the years and my best time in the game was BC when the content was tiered and casuals only got so far. The satisfaction of killing a new raid boss was far beyond the satisfaction of killing a lame version of the last boss. Nobody wants welfare prizes, it’s not fun finishing LFR, it’s mindless being there and a tick box at the end.

Same with loot. Getting a set of tier shoulders as a casual scrub was an amazing feeling. Hell even finishing your first heroic was an amazing feeling.

Satisfaction comes from being challenged, meeting the challenge and overcoming it. Seeing “the story” has no place in a game. If you want to finish a game, any game, get good. You didn’t see the story in Super Metroid if you were a knuckle dragging ape, and you shouldn’t be killing final bosses in WoW if you can’t play at a half decent level. There isn’t even much story to see in WoW and given how much everyone hates the writing, you shouldn’t care anyway!

THIS.

If i were directing the Human Resources dep. @ blizzard i would hire you for sure.

[boz0]

Lfr and lfd both represent a unsustainable game long term. All you end with is the dumpster fire of bfa. Endless grinds and slot machine gear to tide over people who would have more fun playing video poker or farmville respectively.

Any game is unsustainable long term, as long as the technology keeps evolving and new, better games come along. In that regard, WoW is already a huge anomaly in how long it has remained profitable.

The concept of a run you are never expected to lose has no place in any game that markets to teens or older.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but please don't try to decide what everyone else should find fun in a game.

[tikcol]

Tiered content is great. Especially with m+.

I'm at 377 ilevel and I haven't even cleared uldir normal or hc.

4/8 normal, 5/8 hc lol

I also don't feel the slightest inclination to do so because it's more trouble than it's worth.

[boz0]

I keep debating whether there should be different servers. My argument would be to have two difficulty levels, one for heroic and mythic, the other for normal and lfr.

Could make things a LOT better if the game was done that way.

No personal offense meant, but that' one of the worse ideas I've heard in long time regarding this game : you'd just alienate the non-mythic raiders - in other words, the majority of the raiding population - who usually run through normal and then move on to heroic mode (however fast or slow they might progress).

[cparle87]

With the rng/grind fest that is bfa do you think it might be time to return to tiered content? To the idea that there should be content of all difficulty levels rather then difficulty levels for all content?

I can only speak for myself but the excessive rng of bfa has left a craving in me for some good well balanced tiers. No wacky loot. No scaling difficulty. Just a expansion with a measured and gradual difficulty increase from start to finish.

What are your thoughts on it?

That's an unbelievably stupid idea. We already live in a generation of "me me me give it to me now." To adopt say BC's raid structure into Legion we'd have half of all raiders who will never see past EN and ToV (aka T4). Half of the remainder will get to see T5 (ToS), and less than 10% of raiders, or about 0.5% of players, would get to see Antorus (T6). Stop and think on that. Today's players. Being told that there's entire raids and storylines they're not good enough to see. Blizz HQ would be ashes by dawn.

I've seen threads in the last week of people threatening to sue Blizz for 11 years of sub money and trying to get the game banned for deceptive business practices in an entire continent because they didn't read they had to fill the entire pvp bar to earn the glad gear instead thinking winning two 2v2s would be enough. THAT is the kind of entitlement we have now.

[Dusty tome]

Any game is unsustainable long term, as long as the technology keeps evolving and new, better games come along. In that regard, WoW is already a huge anomaly in how long it has remained profitable.


You're entitled to your own opinion, but please don't try to decide what everyone else should find fun in a game.

I don't know super Mario is rereleased every year and seems to be doing fine. No game can be the whole market but niche games like mmos dont really die off so long as they dont go off the rails just looks at the older ones like runescape.

[Deleted]

With the rng/grind fest that is bfa do you think it might be time to return to tiered content? To the idea that there should be content of all difficulty levels rather then difficulty levels for all content?

I can only speak for myself but the excessive rng of bfa has left a craving in me for some good well balanced tiers. No wacky loot. No scaling difficulty. Just a expansion with a measured and gradual difficulty increase from start to finish.

What are your thoughts on it?

That was ok-ish, but for it's time. And as it turned out it wasn't the best thing, because with that system you're effectively cutting entire pieces of content for most of the playerbase, you know like the % of players that actually got into vanilla Naxx or Sunwell or BT before attunements were removed.

The only update to the system that I can think of is to merge LFR and Normal or basically remove LFR and allow queueing for Normal.

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LFR has been in WoW longer than in hasn't and the subs have more than halved, I don't play the game as my subs running out and BfA is complete trash so I'm already over it, games clearly fucking terrible and LFR has never helped. kbai

So you blame the population decline on LFR? Makes no sense for anyone to stop playing because LFR exists, unless insane or just finding excuses because they've grown of the game. LFR is nothing but a walk in the park that has a chance to award some crap gear, why would that have any impact on anyone not interested in it? If it awarded Heroic level gear then yea, I'd agree.

[Dusty tome]

That was ok-ish, but for it's time. And as it turned out it wasn't the best thing, because with that system you're effectively cutting entire pieces of content for most of the playerbase, you know like the % of players that actually got into vanilla Naxx or Sunwell or BT before attunements were removed.

The only update to the system that I can think of is to merge LFR and Normal or basically remove LFR and allow queueing for Normal.

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So you blame the population decline on LFR? Makes no sense for anyone to stop playing because LFR exists, unless insane or just finding excuses because they've grown of the game. LFR is nothing but a walk in the park that has a chance to award some crap gear, why would that have any impact on anyone not interested in it? If it awarded Heroic level gear then yea, I'd agree.

It is better to have content almost no one sees. Then have content everyone sees unless you can release a entire raid tier monthly.

[Deleted]

It is better to have content almost no one sees. Then have content everyone sees unless you can release a entire raid tier monthly.

Better for who? You'll have less than 5% completing all the content and over 50% that will never set foot in the raid. And the rest that will be stuck on x, y or z boss.

From what standpoint is that better?

[klepp0906]

You have no proof it is a direct consequence. Correlation is not causation and a thousand other things have changed in that time.

yes, and its direct consequence for many i assure you.

picture this. a particular guy runs 3x the content of the next guy in his guild. is twice the player. yet has not only worse itemization, but a much lower ilvl.

rng is fun.

this particular guy is about to quit wow due to the aforementioned, and due to several of his closest friends quitting already.

[Gadzooks]

With the rng/grind fest that is bfa do you think it might be time to return to tiered content? To the idea that there should be content of all difficulty levels rather then difficulty levels for all content?

I can only speak for myself but the excessive rng of bfa has left a craving in me for some good well balanced tiers. No wacky loot. No scaling difficulty. Just a expansion with a measured and gradual difficulty increase from start to finish.

What are your thoughts on it?

I don't think this is a fix that is needed, and that's not really the issue. There's more than that, that's been stripped from the game. People need want and need access to content in multiple ways, and they have it, but the overwhelming complaints are not access, it's how the game itself plays (classes and GCD), and the reward structures for it (or lack of, and RNG), and a lot of the content is simply not enjoyable (warfronts and islands), and the removal of anything outside of that.

Everything in the game that's being complained about could be and probably would be applied to a tier system. Isn't that what Legion basically was? And one of the more hotly contested issues of the game? Legendaries and Titanforging?

Simply put, I don't think it's complaints of getting into a raid, it's what they get out of it. And, not just gear.

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It is better to have content almost no one sees. Then have content everyone sees unless you can release a entire raid tier monthly.

Extra bosses on heroic worked really well for that. It's a point of pride for guilds to reach, and beat them, and they had unique rewards, as they should.

[Revamp Man]

So do you have a hate boner for lfr or do you just not like the fact you can get a chance at watered down loot for nothing

I agree that going back to the old way would be refreshing
Lfr being a tier behind would be ok with me
But honestly at the end of the day...its not my content
When m+ got a gear swapping restriction we saw those who had no dog in that fight say it was amazing
When the gcd change was made we saw it supported by players mostly unaffected
When master looter was removed we saw people claim it only hurt ninjas (even though you needed a guild group to use ml)

I raid
I have the skill and time
As do you
Anything under what you do is not your concern
"But its too easy for the rest of them"
I have seen wipes on every boss in lfr so no it's not easy for everyone
I have seen people in heroic not know basic mechanics

Stop

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It is better to have content almost no one sees. Then have content everyone sees unless you can release a entire raid tier monthly.

From a business stand point that is retarded

Again why would it matter if little jimmy from a backwater server got to kill a boss with missing mechanics
Neck legion lfr had a boss where the boss wasn't there

[Dusty tome]

Better for who? You'll have less than 5% completing all the content and over 50% that will never set foot in the raid. And the rest that will be stuck on x, y or z boss.

From what standpoint is that better?

It's better for everyone. It gives every single person but the best of the best of players to work towards constantly. You replaced a rpg with slot machine.

[lollerlaban]

Might want to look at the sub numbers decline after WOTLK by more than half the player base after WOTLK designed raids champ.

https://imgur.com/a/04uhViU

Might not wanna use popularity spike as a valid argument, champ.