4 boss difficulties - the name of accessibility ruins all motivation to do it

[LionSinMaikeru]

Yes, but if you go back to that old TBC model of raiding, you'll probably end up with similar numbers of people actually seeing the content. With the current system, the content is accessible to players. The old system meant that the overwhelming majority of players never saw the content. It isn't exactly ideal to spend copious amounts of time and money on content that only 1 in 20 players will ever experience.

Why is that a problem?

Only a small % of players stepped foot in Naxx in Vanilla and Sunwell in TBC.

I wasn't one of them. And you know what? I was fine with that.

Not everything needs to be accessible to everyone.

[Ryzek]

Our raid just does Heroic and maybe a Mythic boss or two. Most of us never even go into LFR or Normal. That works for us and we do get fun and value from it.

[MrExcelion]

"In something like Classic, there is only 1 difficulty. 1 difficulty makes beating a boss, all have the exact same experience, all have the exact same loot dropping, all have the exact same feel of guild progression once it dies."

Classic is fairly easy though, isn't much of a feeling of progression with MC

It's a million times more fun to kill Ragnaros in Classic

He's dying before Sons of Flame. And I just spam Frostbolt. Doing 20 man clears next week.

Not really a good idea to bring Classic into the debate, though Retail should have one less difficulty.

[Gref]

also why would blizz spend time and money on something that only a 5% of ppl ever see?

I hate this argument. Not everybody is supposed to finish every damn game they buy. It is there, if you try hard enough you can beat the game.
Dark Souls, if you suck forget about getting past the first boss already, if you are dedicated enough you can clear everything.

Did you guys use to beat every game you owned back in your childhood? Nobody can convince me that they beat super mario on the first try passing 8-4.
Nobody can convince me that they finished solomon's key in their first try. Imfuckingpossible.

I didn't cry and bitch about it when I couldn't even set foot in to the nax. I knew what I could do and what my guild could do.
Naxx was there, with effort, I could get into it. I made different choices. This time tho, I am willing to go %100 to clear all classic.

Retail people should suck it up. 1 difficulty. You put effort, well done you cleared the game. No effort, sorry than you stay at stage 1.
There can be a story mode though if you want to see what happens, that I can meh and accept.

[jellmoo]

Why is that a problem?

Only a small % of players stepped foot in Naxx in Vanilla and Sunwell in TBC.

I wasn't one of them. And you know what? I was fine with that.

Not everything needs to be accessible to everyone.

It's not a problem, but it's not a great RoI. When trying to keep your players engaged, happy, and continuing to subscribe, you need to try and offer them content to do. If you spend a lot of your development time strictly on content that only the top few % of the playerbase ever see, you're going to run into a problem.

Having multiple difficulties helps to offset this. It lets a much larger number of players actually experience content, while those seeking the hardcore style of play can continue pushing. It also may whet the appetite of the casual player to want to try the higher difficulty levels.

[kaminaris]

It's not a problem, but it's not a great RoI. When trying to keep your players engaged, happy, and continuing to subscribe, you need to try and offer them content to do. If you spend a lot of your development time strictly on content that only the top few % of the playerbase ever see, you're going to run into a problem.

Having multiple difficulties helps to offset this. It lets a much larger number of players actually experience content, while those seeking the hardcore style of play can continue pushing. It also may whet the appetite of the casual player to want to try the higher difficulty levels.

And not everything is accessible to everyone. Funny how nobody ever mentions pvp. Arenas at 3k vs arenas at 1.6k, rated vs normal battleground. It is a damn difficulty setting which has been in game since forever, yet nobody cares. Or maybe blizz should remove normal battegrounds because it allows casuals to see content?

Not everything needs to be accessible to everyone.

This is yet again common logical fallacy, mythic raiding is still inaccessible for large portion of playerbase. And what comes with it, seeing all mechanics, getting cutting edge and getting mythic only mount.

[Th3Scourge]

Yeah, maybe for you, but most people I know only do the content relevant to them and their guild's skill level

Some guilds will raid mythic only
Some will raid mythic and heroic
Some will raid heroic and normal
Some will raid normal only

Do what you like. You don't HAVE to do any of the difficulties.

[Biomega]

Yeah, maybe for you, but most people I know only do the content relevant to them and their guild's skill level

Some guilds will raid mythic only
Some will raid mythic and heroic
Some will raid heroic and normal
Some will raid normal only

Do what you like. You don't HAVE to do any of the difficulties.

IDK why this hasn't come up already, and if it has, why it hasn't ended the thread on the spot.

OP literally sounds like "okay so any ice cream flavor aside from vanilla isn't needed, I don't care that you like strawberry and that nothing in the world forces me to eat strawberry if I don't want to, BUT I WANT ALL YOUR OTHER FLAVORS GONE!".

You know why we aren't going back to 1 raid difficulty? Because it pissed off the people that didn't enjoy it, be that because it was too hard or too easy. There's a REASON we went to more difficulties, and it was the diversity of the player base. You think mythic raiders want to raid snooze-difficulty raids? No. You think LFR casuals want to be yelled at because they're not doing heroic-level mechanics? No. This way, more people are happy.

But not OP, I guess. And that's fine.

[Th3Scourge]

"Seeing that raid", "beating that boss" and "getting that loot" used to be the main motivator to rise up to be more hardcore. Not just "if u wanna beat same boss for the same gear scaled, go ahead m8. Maybe we throw in some mount for it too lol"...

So I take it you've cleared Mythic EP?

[Kokolums]

Yes, but if you go back to that old TBC model of raiding, you'll probably end up with similar numbers of people actually seeing the content. With the current system, the content is accessible to players. The old system meant that the overwhelming majority of players never saw the content. It isn't exactly ideal to spend copious amounts of time and money on content that only 1 in 20 players will ever experience.

I define "seeing the content" as seeing it at it hardest difficulty setting, pre-nerfs (but not bugged obviously). As such, VERY VERY FEW have been able to see the content for years. When they redefined "seeing the content" as "knocking over an LFR boss that is NOTHING like what its actually intended to be like" I kinda gave up on raiding in any serious capacity. It would be utterly demoralizing to work hard to build up a raid team, work my way thru mythic, get to the last boss, and then they nerf the hell out of it so I cannot experience it as it was meant to be. So I don't bother.

[Asaliah]

I would like a higher difficulty in LFR to a least feel a tiny tiny bit of accomplishment when I kill a boss...

But people would all leave after 2 or 3 wipes anyway...

(MAKE MYTHIC DUNGEONS LFG-ABLE FFS (at least MM+0))

[re1gn1te]

Actualy it would make playera far more interested in the game.

Yeah sure when 90% of people wipe for ever on the first boss cause there trash.

[jellmoo]

I define "seeing the content" as seeing it at it hardest difficulty setting, pre-nerfs (but not bugged obviously). As such, VERY VERY FEW have been able to see the content for years. When they redefined "seeing the content" as "knocking over an LFR boss that is NOTHING like what its actually intended to be like" I kinda gave up on raiding in any serious capacity. It would be utterly demoralizing to work hard to build up a raid team, work my way thru mythic, get to the last boss, and then they nerf the hell out of it so I cannot experience it as it was meant to be. So I don't bother.

Why not look at it like “seeing the content at the difficulty level you like”? If you want to see it at the hardest level, you have that option. However, if you only cater for the story and immersion, you can go the LFR route.

[Fred Skinner]

It's hard to come up with Data for it when we don't even know how many players are actively playing the game. The only thing i can tell you is that LFR simply does not open anymore for a majority of hours around the week.

The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it could be limited to your realm pool. But i share your impression to the degree that queue times are very large for LFR. I would not say because there are not many playing it, but just because you need two tanks and 5 healers to get it opened. And the tank-healer-dd-quota among casual gamers is way lower probably.

Queue times are one of the problems about LFR. And a big problem. And based on changes the devs made to LFR. Probably that a tank has a central role in a LFR raid, and is always blamed for everything. Tanks are often the defacto raid leaders in LFR.

And yes, i think the rewards are not great, based on other changes from blizzard to defacto remove LFR from useful character progression.

The developers, highly biased towards organized raids, never really liked the massive success of LFR, so they tried to change it being less successfull, because they want to see everyone who is interested in raids in joining raiding guilds. Which is the most stupid approach to casual game design i have ever seen in a MMORPG.

And i cannot blame anybody for not going there. Like i said earlier: Why would you? The trinkets are shit. The "special" Azerite traits are not special. Grinding out Essences is horrifying with the low number of drops (especially when Qing takes ages to even get in in the first place). The pets are all recolors. So why would you burden yourself Qing LFR on an Alt when you can get better stuff much, much faster from other content in the game? Including Worldquests.

To see the story. And to pay mythic raids. That is literally what Ion Hazzikostas said LFR is for. Millions of sub payers who pay the developers mythic raiding experience.

Of course, with the quality of the expansion there is little reason to play it to begin with, but other content like M+, Worldquests and *shiver* Warfronts *cleans mouth* are MUCH better rewarded per time played.

"How to destroy the endgame of millions" - by Ion Hazzikostas and the LFR reward design team

The only statistic i can offer for the state of LFR is
a) average Q times
and
b) people actually wearing any LFR gear

.. while this is llimited to anecotal evidence, as blizzard prevents statistics based on raid bracket participation.

I just inspected 10 random players in Boralus who were at the ilvl around LFR. Result: ONE guy wore 2 pieces of LFR gear. The vast majority of gear people had was from worldquests, followed by benthic and M+.

Worldquests are casual content, too, and they have another problem.. being lackluster and not really replayable on a large term. See my signature.

As i already wrote, i think the devlopers do not want casual or solo content to be compelling, because they believe premade groups and raiding guilds is the only way to go. Because of a massively stupid design bias in the brains of some questionable individuals, who focus on rated and premade groups rather than allowing everyone to play like he choses to play. Result is that the content and the gameplay for the masses is time gated ( which includes large queues ) and lackluster, just to create an incentive in the game to join organized raid groups.

[Arkthugal]

"You killed Azshara? Good for you, refer to my Bane of the Fallen King and its appropriate date."

Said no one, ever.

[Izenhart]

pretty good example of "you think you do but you don't" actually being a fair assessment of the playerbase's clueless game knowledge, like many times before the screeching minority forced Blizzard's hand into a decision that would casualize the game and then would, years later, be used against Blizzard as a criticism for "having casualized the game".....by the same likeminded people who lobbied for that change in the first place.

Like catchup gear because guilds were stuck in Karazhan and couldn't progress anymore, so they gave them upgraded Badge gear from farming HC dungeons and Zul Aman, which was supposed to be "a gift to hardcore raiders" turned into loot pinata, 10m difficulty AND normal/hardmode, then making 10m have the same gear/titles/mounts as 25m, like making rewards back-trackable and not be removed after every tier (like The Immortal and the Black Proto Drake) like Flex, then LFR, then dailies. But then MoP had too many dailies so people complained, so Blizzard gave us WoD with absolutely nothing other than grinding, even more complaining, so they met them halfway in Legion and gave them a little bit of both.

There's always something the average Joe thinks he knows more than Blizzard and will cry until he gets it, then realize it's utter shit and turn on Blizzard for having such a shit design in the game.

unequivocally and universally, unattainable content is good for a game because it increases the prestige, the motivation and the incentive to reach it, it creates a social hierarchy in the game, it gives your character a place, a stature, it's how you still remember good guilds from 15 years ago, or that player from your same class that AFK'd on IF bridge in full T3 and you were drooling over it, that's what it generates, it doesn't matter if you never even got close to Naxxramas, you still drew motivation to go into MC or BWL or ZG with the drive to get better, that's why you need it, and that's why saying "but it allows people to see the content that they otherwise wouldn't do, how does it hurt you" is the problem here, because we go back to the original issue: you're not entitled to every piece of content in a game just because you bought it.

Some games put secret levels, rooms, bosses or interactions based on a miriad of different feats you're supposed to accomplish to unlock such content, an MMORPG is no different, or shouldn't be.

These people who clear LFR/Normal a few times weren't going to raid anyways? yea. But they also weren't going to stick playing the game JUST because they cleared a braindead mode either.

So why don't you just remove their accessibility to such raids at the cost of making them...disappointed? angry? but add back making raid items have more value, more prestige, be more rare, be worth more, and possibly, possibly invite more people towards organized raiding?


You think it's cool, in your casual self, to be dressed in full T5 with an Invincible mount and a Firelord title, but you started playing in MoP, you shouldn't even have been touching any of these things with a 10 foot pole, you're 421ilvl and never got past anything harder than Heroic raiding, that should have reflected in the way your gear looks, and your title, and your achievement, because that is your place in the game. I earned that T5, I wiped 350 times on HC Ragnaros, why are you wearing those things too, if you didn't put the same effort?

To not come off as too elitist, I think transmog runs and having a collection of mounts is cool and actually even gives you something to do when you're bored, but there needs to be limits, it has completely removed a big part of the RPG element in an MMO, allowing people to roam around with rewards they don't deserve.

Rewards are the driving point of any loot based game, going from "1 raid boss, 1 item" to "1 raid boss, 4 items 15ilvl apart, different color palette, same model, can titanforge all at the same ilvl, can be farmed il later expansion to keep the appearance even if you never did it in current content" is far too much.


Washing out content over multiple layers of difficulties devaules its worth, there is no way around it.

[Fred Skinner]

Washing out content over multiple layers of difficulties devaules its worth, there is no way around it.

Limiting content to a few thousand means the content you talk about could not be very massive. As only a few thousand see it.

Do you want raids with reused assets only, that tell no final story? As like some large rabbit in an existing cave you may kill every week?

Raid design is expensive. Assets are expensive. Who is going to pay for it, if noone sees it?

[swatsonqt]

Remove Mythic. Nobody needs that mode and it's too time consuming. I mean...that's of course also a problem of guilds an community perception but if i need to keep my char maxed out for 3 Month with at least 3 evenings of raiding a week..well yeah that mode is going to die anyways

[Fred Skinner]

Remove Mythic. Nobody needs that mode and it's too time consuming. I mean...that's of course also a problem of guilds an community perception but if i need to keep my char maxed out for 3 Month with at least 3 evenings of raiding a week..well yeah that mode is going to die anyways

Mythic raiding only still exists because the game director is (or was) a mythic raider himself. A bias among the developers which sees competition and premade group play as the only gameplay that matters. Because of "loyal customers", which means that premade groups are more addictive than matchmade groups. Which may be true, but ignoring the fact that there is a 1000:1 quota of matchmade groups to premade groups or raiding guilds, so it is rather stupid to follow the mantra to death, that "playing with friends" should be the focus of all game design.

[Alkizon]

Well, it's, as it were, an integral set of problems to the same extent as neighboring topic. This is same complex of game mechanic organization, which in the sense of "consequences" isn't very objectively to consider separately from its other components. So, I'm going just quote my post from there (6 is talking directly in favor of current thread in context of inside design):

Because:
1) problems of content vs progress (motivation);
2) inflation of characteristics and glut (albeit often useless and almost always not in accordance with merit) by rewards;
3) supplemented (2) by mechanism of demending RNG, personal loot and scaling (to lvl/spec/everything);
4) automation of social part (and, moreover, this is typical of all similar lfx mechanisms that should better leave away to the same direction);
5) even design of classes adapts (roles&specs, balance and other nonsense) to all mechanisms mentioned above (instead of being dominant dictator in gameplay design questions, this isn't easy to prove, but trend clearly indicates that all of above was at least taken into account);
6) raids' (dungeons', for other lfx) design is also being affected by this (division into temporary, finished small parts, organization of navigation and other things).