Is it fun to be bad at the game?

[Ryonas]

It is a game. The *ONLY* point of a game is to entertain. My only responsibility is to be entertained. If I enjoy my time in game, then I have met my only requirement, and am not "bad" at it.

[Kantor]

I made this point before on another plane, and i made it in a galaxy far far away. I'll make it here. It is not that players willfully don't want to learn how to play properly, it is that players want to learn while playing. To many, having to "do homework" and "Study" to play a game is not all that engaging. Personally, i love learning about all the mechanics, and how they interact at different stat levels and the situational niches of those things... Most people dont have the time for that.

At the end of the day, it is the games responsibility to teach players how their classes work, and how their abilities interact. If not looking up a guide on how to play your class is the difference between 1k vs 2k dps, then the failure isn't on the player, its a failure of the game. Same with HPS, or TPS/damage taken vs. mitigated.

Think about the new starting experience, how it actually walks you through each new ability you get, and lets you know about when you should use it. That is a good first step. They need to put in a training mode/trial at high levels, similar to what MoP had, but tailor it to specific classes. Heck, they could even just do it with that new 3 man dungeon, make a heroic version at level 50, and have a prominent NPC of the class teach you some of the finer points of your specialization.

[Lolites]

But you're not playing WoW with people who are exactly at your skill level.

well unless you are full decked mythic raider runing LFR, then yes, you do play with people on your skill level...
and even if you are i assume you know those people are hardly at your skill level when you log into LFR...

[sunnycutie]

well unless you are full decked mythic raider runing LFR, then yes, you do play with people on your skill level...
and even if you are i assume you know those people are hardly at your skill level when you log into LFR...

No, just do a random dungeon and you'll see that there's a variety of different skill levels present.

Do a PUG and you'll find people of different skill levels.

Do any kind of content and you'll see this.

[Lolites]

No, just do a random dungeon and you'll see that there's a variety of different skill levels present.

Do a PUG and you'll find people of different skill levels.

Do any kind of content and you'll see this.

and thats EXACTLY what i was talking about... random dungeon (normal or heroic, as above you cant go random) is WAAAAAAY below skill level of someone who does M+20 or higher, and player as such have pretty much no reason to go there, but if he will, unless he is completely braindead, he have to realise people they WILL NOT be on his skill level, and shouldnt expect them to be, BUT since he have no real reason to go there HE DOESNT HAVE TO, he have no reason or motivation or whatnot to play with those people, he can play pretty much the same content but on his skill level...

you can only do content on your skill level, with people of similar skill, if you choose to do worse its YOUR stupidity...
its like if Messi came to elementary school PE lesson to play football with them and then complain they are not as good as he is...

[Sting]

It's probably more fun as a game if you lack even the game knowledge to know you're bad

[cloudbuster]

Is it fun to post dumb strawman arguments?

[Lakrin]

I mean there was a time back in '04 when I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I was still having a blast running around all over Lordaeron with my Forsaken Warlock. So yeah, you can definitely be bad at the game and still have enormous amounts of fum. I'd argue the game is *more* fun when you have an idea of what you're doing, though; especially when group-oriented play becomes more and more the focus of progressing.

I agree wholeheartedly. When I was leveling back in BC (also a Forsaken warlock, hey!), part of the fun was figuring out how to play instead of copying the styles of other players. Now, once I was doing group content, I had to step it up (and pay attention and learn!) and that was fun too. It's a lot more fun for me to learn by doing than to learn by watching a YouTube video. That doesn't mean I want to suck at the game, but min-maxing everything to death is less of a focus than learning and improving as I go.

[Lolites]

I see the argument brought up a lot that content should be based around the worst of the playerbase.

nobody have EVER said that...
people say content should not be be based around top players, but around casuals...
do casuals only do lower difficulties of content? sure
does that mean they are "bad" at the game? not at all, a lot of people only do casual content bcs they dont care about higher difficulty, or they dont have time (or dont want to spend that much tome) to do it, but that doesnt mean they are bad...

now why should content be based around casuals? bcs they are VAST majority, and doing content for them doesnt mean "top" or "Bad" players wont get any content, but if the content was based around top players (only mythic raids for example) others wouldnt have anything to do in that field of game... do that in all fields and people will leave, which would lead to death of game and no content for anyone...

[TaurenNinja]

nobody have EVER said that...
people say content should not be be based around top players, but around casuals...
do casuals only do lower difficulties of content? sure
does that mean they are "bad" at the game? not at all, a lot of people only do casual content bcs they dont care about higher difficulty, or they dont have time (or dont want to spend that much tome) to do it, but that doesnt mean they are bad...

now why should content be based around casuals? bcs they are VAST majority, and doing content for them doesnt mean "top" or "Bad" players wont get any content, but if the content was based around top players (only mythic raids for example) others wouldnt have anything to do in that field of game... do that in all fields and people will leave, which would lead to death of game and no content for anyone...

The problem is that people mean different things with the phrase "catered to casuals". Typically, when people say this in a negative way, they think that the game ONLY caters to casuals. Which isn't true... the game caters to EVERYONE (which is the right way... you don't cater to just one specific audience but all of them because you want everyone to have fun in the game and stay subbed and spend money on the game), which is why there's so many different difficulties, content and achievements, so that everyone can find their favorite niche and experience a progression within the game. And even within a single content type there's usually different levels of play, e.g. going for World Firsts or very fast raid clears is significantly more challenging than just having the goal of "clearing the raid within the current content patch cycle", because there's less publicly available information about the encounters available early on, everyone is more undergeared still, and everyone has less accumulated experience over several weeks/months.

[Pony Soldier]

I wouldn't call it being bad at the game but rather just not being so serious about it. The reason I don't push myself to fully maximize my performance is not only do I not care about having the best performance but the fact that having to rely on other people to get the truly good stuff takes a lot of time out of the day. Time that I do not want to waste by standing around trying to first of all find a group that won't decline me, get replacements because people keep giving up, or wiping over and over. It's one of the reasons why I mostly just do solo or LFG/LFR content. Trying to get into a heroic or mythic raid is just too much of a hassle for me and again it takes up way too much of my time and dedication.

I think what also kills it for me is the fact that you can spend like 3 hours doing a raid and get nothing beneficial for your character thanks to RNG. There's no worse feeling in WoW than spending that much time and getting nothing out of it but repair bills. I'm perfectly happy with just getting the best gear I can get from WQs or dungeons. Call me a casual or whatever but for me it's just not worth the time or hassle to maximize my character just to have all that gear become irrelevant in the next expansion and then to do it all over again.

As for PvP I don't bother with it much. Once in a long while I'll queue for a random BG and try to grind for the awesome looking PvP mounts but for the most part I don't bother with it because I find that kind of gameplay boring and a waste of time.

[Advent]

I wouldn't call it being bad at the game but rather just not being so serious about it. The reason I don't push myself to fully maximize my performance is not only do I not care about having the best performance but the fact that having to rely on other people to get the truly good stuff takes a lot of time out of the day. Time that I do not want to waste by standing around trying to first of all find a group that won't decline me, get replacements because people keep giving up, or wiping over and over. It's one of the reasons why I mostly just do solo or LFG/LFR content. Trying to get into a heroic or mythic raid is just too much of a hassle for me and again it takes up way too much of my time and dedication.

I think what also kills it for me is the fact that you can spend like 3 hours doing a raid and get nothing beneficial for your character thanks to RNG. There's no worse feeling in WoW than spending that much time and getting nothing out of it but repair bills. I'm perfectly happy with just getting the best gear I can get from WQs or dungeons. Call me a casual or whatever but for me it's just not worth the time or hassle to maximize my character just to have all that gear become irrelevant in the next expansion and then to do it all over again.

As for PvP I don't bother with it much. Once in a long while I'll queue for a random BG and try to grind for the awesome looking PvP mounts but for the most part I don't bother with it because I find that kind of gameplay boring and a waste of time.

I felt the exact same way. We should have met a long time ago.

[sunnycutie]

and thats EXACTLY what i was talking about... random dungeon (normal or heroic, as above you cant go random) is WAAAAAAY below skill level of someone who does M+20 or higher

Why do you keep going to such extremes? Even people who do heroic dungeons are at different skilllevels. This is not about gear. It's about how good you are at playing the game.

[Lolites]

Why do you keep going to such extremes? Even people who do heroic dungeons are at different skilllevels. This is not about gear. It's about how good you are at playing the game.

you said you play with people of all skills, which is BULLSHIT
i said YOU DONT HAVE TO, bcs you can play only with people on your skill level, bcs you dont have to do low skill content, and you literaly CHOOSE people for anything above hc dungeon...

and yes, people doing the same content are on different skill level, but they are there bcs THEY CHOOSE to do the content that is either way below or way above their skill level... bcs if its not they are of similar skill level and there is no problem...

and i never mentioned gear so i have no fucking clue why you did, as if that was my argument...

if you need it simplified even more im afraid i cant help you

[sunnycutie]

you said you play with people of all skills, which is BULLSHIT
i said YOU DONT HAVE TO, bcs you can play only with people on your skill level, bcs you dont have to do low skill content, and you literaly CHOOSE people for anything above hc dungeon...

And I repeat, do a random dungeon or a PUG raid, and you can find people of different skill levels. People of different skill levels do all sorts of different content. New players always start playing the game, so you always have players with low skill levels mixing with experienced players. Next time someone in your dungeon group complains about "that noob doing everything wrong", take notice. This is a player with a high skill level (or at least that's the image he wants to portray) complaining about a player with a low skill level. If you deny this, I get the feeling you're not even playing the game.

[MoanaLisa]

This has been a fun thread to read and think about as I read other threads on the site.

One thing that jumps out is that...well, yeah, it might be more fun to be bad at the game. That depends on how you define 'bad' of course. A lot of times 'bad' seems to be anything under the 90th percentile. But I digress.

The main observation I wanted to make is that when you read a lot here it pretty quickly becomes clear that many of those who view themselves as very good to excellent are not having that much fun based on their complaints. Those complaints are all over the map but there seems to be some relationship with those who complain about doing what needs to be done in the game to be viewed as "not bad." Those that probably are bad may be OK. Off of this forum I belong to several Facebook groups where most of the members of those groups are somewhat older but quite numerous. One group has close to 20,000 members with something like half of them having been active in the group in the last 30 days.

I'm quite sure that many here would point, laugh and otherwise call them bad. And they're not great players. Some of them venture into normal raiding and have difficulties even there. But you read their comments day after day and they are definitely having fun. They're social, a lot of them are up for helping one another, they have group guilds that in some cases are quite large, it's a no-pressure situation and they do things like congratulate each other when they level up to '58' actual age. Many of them play once or twice a week at most.

That's not scientific but it's something to think about. It's always been an idea of mine that if you're OK with the game you're typically not spending a lot of time on a forum.

[sunnycutie]

you said you play with people of all skills, which is BULLSHIT

no, it's really not, and I'm tired of explaining it