"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Isnt the exciting news Mike was talking about just the Microsoft thing?
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
No, that was news from 3 days ago.
He's clearly talking about content announcements:We also know we need to deliver content to our players on a more regular basis and innovate both in and beyond our existing games. We have some exciting things to announce, and I’ll be sharing more next week.
Formerly known as Arafal
I agree that the game needs to have avenues for a wide variety of skill levels, but I've been concerned that the multiple difficulties in World of Warcraft indirectly hinder that plan in practice.
The problem is that making sure each of those difficulties is properly balanced for each of wildly varying skill levels is an extremely intensive task. It's not just a matter of copying the content and shifting all the numbers by a certain percentage. A ton of work goes into making sure each difficulty of raids is a fair challenge for its target demographic. Work that perhaps could have gone into different kinds of content, or even just more raids.
Also, difficulty alone doesn't account for playstyle, which often go hand-in-hand. It's been public knowledge for a long time that raiding is statistically far more niche than its treatment would imply. In theory it sounds noble to make sure that everyone can experience the raids no matter what their skill level. In practice it means the time you could be spending on balancing content for the people who aren't into raiding is spent balancing a version of raids for them on the off chance they do.
I'm very happy about Looking for Raid. Dragon Soul was the first time I ever saw the climax of the story in World of Warcraft when it was current content and not common knowledge long-since-spoiled. However, I'm only happy about it because raids are the only place to get the story, and I'm occasionally required to go there for some quests and rewards as well. I don't like raiding. The organization and group size and time commitments are things that bring me anxiety, not enjoyment. It's not my playstyle, regardless of difficulty.
You could even argue it's discouraged me from staying subscribed in a way that's become so subconsciously normal for me that it didn't even occur to me until I was writing this post. I'm so used to the big story moments being locked away from me until long after they're common knowledge (even with Looking for Raid, the wings are rolled out so slowly that they've even outright spoiled the conclusion in-world before LFR players even had a chance to see it), that I find no real incentive to experience these things in-game. I watch cutscenes the moment they're revealed or datamined not simply because I follow the game that closely, but because I know it's going to be months or maybe even years before I experience some raids (I usually wait until I can solo or duo them, because I actually enjoy that).
The problem with Torghast is that they tied it to an unfun grind resource that you never felt excited about acquiring, just kinda plodding along until you got your legendary/could upgrade it. That, along with what I think is that the majority of people have run Torghast solo, which I think is a lesser experience to group Torghast.
Torghast should have been a modern take on MoP's 3-man scenarios. Make it a fixed 3-man thing you can queue for as well as find a manual group for, and then build the content off the group play, like for instance giving Torghast powers intra-class synergy. That could have been really cool. M+ borrows from this and keeps itself fresh because each dungeon run is never the same due to the people you play with. Torghast runs felt very stale because they were very static. I guess that's why they tried to remedy this with Twisting Corridors but it wasn't enough.
It's crazy but I think people enjoyed 8.3's horrific visions runs more than Torghast, which is weird since it predates it design-wise. They bungled it somewhere along the way.
Torshast is really weird. I think it's a great idea in theory, and in practice it carries through on a lot of that potential, but it's just got some glaring issues.
Mostly, I just want to see it improved in the future. I think I mentioned it before, but my brother and I imagined a Torghast-like feature placed in a more timeless location like the Caverns of Time (no pun intended) or even just some "Adventurer's Guild" that you "depart from", that could have content added to it every once and awhile, new wings themed to whatever is relevant at the time.
The first thing that stood out to me about Torghast was how overly cautious it came across. Part of its draw was supposed to be earning these temporary yet extremely exciting powers that would break the game anywhere else. While some classes got some amazing combos, other classes got super boring or even mostly utility stuff that made it a slog to repeat or tackle the harder things as.
The scaling was also super weird. My friends and I felt the solo or small group essence was finally something up our alley, but the difficulty could swing wildly. Sometimes one of our friends would be struggling with a solo run of something so one of us would join up to help them, but it would only make it worse because the bad guys suddenly turned into huge health sponges and one extra person doesn't fully compensate for that (especially if they're one of the classes with utility-focused powers).
"The few of these mysterious creatures that remain appear to be impossibly old, almost timeless. Perhaps they were created by the First Ones, because no schematic to synthesize these has yet been discovered."
Oooo
Yeah they turn into ghastly sponges the more players you bring in but it is fun to do by yourself if you don't have anyone to run with at the time. I really wish they'd bring the Torghast Tower along with us but they tend to discard some features and consider it a failure each time(Now that may not be incorrect but it feels like it).
#TeamLegion #UnderEarthofAzerothexpansion plz #Arathor4Alliance #TeamNoBlueHorde
Warrior-Magi
I mean in my opinion most of the expansion features suffer from being "too safe."
WoW in general is "too safe" because they fucked up trying to innovate so many times they can't afford to do it anymore, as a result you get a stable, but stale game that retains current players but does little to entice new ones.
There really isn't anything shiny or special about Shadowlands as a whole. It was actually the first expansion launch that didn't really move me much at all (I've played all of them.)
I recall when we first got the big info-dump on Shadowlands some people said that an expansion didn't need a big draw or shiny feature and that as long as the systems and class gameplay were good the expansion would be good.
Well, both the systems and the class design for the most part are pretty good and yet the game is still... just ok.
Honorary member of the Baine Fanclub, the only member really.