Parasitic systems drive spreadsheet design is the problem, agree or disagree?

[Couchpotato2013]

You know what amazes me about this thread/forum

Y'all simply can't say "I don't like the game anymore so I'll stop playing".

No you gotta come up with bullshit buzzwords like "Borrowed Power" and "Parasitic systems" and "Spreadsheet Designs"

Guaranteed most of the people who quit the game barely have 2 shits about either of those and just said the first thing I said

"I don't like the game anymore so I won't play"

This really. Nothing wrong with stating concern for something you don’t like, sticking around a bit and then deucing out cause it didn’t get better. But to sit playing the game for years and complaining about it, just screams the behavior of an addict who is too weak to quit. And honestly why bargain with an addict on trying to make things better? They are already hooked. Really leads me too believe that way to many people left playing the game now (and complaining, which I have as well not going to hide from that) have objectively nothing going on for themselves outside of WoW.

Here’s a tip if you want things to improve, quit. If you think blizz does everything to get more money out of you then, anything that prevents them from getting it should cause them to change behavior to something more favorable. Unsub and play some non-Activision-Blizzard game. Don’t play any of their games which will play into propping up MAUs. Maybe with a Nash equilibrium to the Nth degree of prisoners working together against the warden will things get better.

Or they won’t and then blizz dies. Doesn’t matter loads of companies died since your birth until now, that you used to visit and plenty more will collapse/get bought out until your death. Don’t get so clingy with any one of them ever. Too much heartache and really is weird if you look at other people doing it for other companies (usual meme being about Apple users).

[MoanaLisa]

The argument about parasitic systems implies that there is a through-line from expansion to expansion. Starting with boosted characters available with expansion purchase I don't believe this is true any longer. Blizzard is designing expansions essentially as stand-alone games now and have been ever since the boost was available.

Your power from the previous expansion doesn't matter. Your gear mostly doesn't matter. About the only thing that carries through is cosmetic in nature: transmog, achievements, mounts, etc. You get a fresh character that is pushed up close to the starting line with everyone else with an expansion so there's no need to do anything with previous content. By the time you've leveled in an expansion (which is trivial)—and lost power for doing so—the game is designed for everyone diligent enough to be on more or less equal footing. Previous core game and expansions don't really matter. Accomplished elite raiders used to carry shit for farmer Brown to get a shiny new cloak when leveling.

If an expansion is viewed as a stand-alone then the argument about borrowed power and parasitic design becomes moot. It's just a different self-sustaining version of the game. It's not really an expansion as such in the sense that previous content is required. That's why the WoW2 argument doesn't hold up very well. It can be argued that every expansion is a mild form of WoW2. Expansions are more sequels than truly an expanded version of the entire game.

About borrowed power: I do not see the core difference between doing repetitive content in the form of dailies in Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cataclysm or Mists (and so on), and the so-called borrowed power stuff we have now. You do content over and over to gain some skinned version of 'reputation' so you can gain some power by acquiring new or improved items or add power to a tree-like interface. Every bit of that is borrowed power—because you will not keep it after the expansion—and is in one sense a core design principle of the game. What you do in expansion X has little meaning other than cosmetic in the next.

I personally don't care for this in an MMO but it's what they do. The fact remains, however, if a brand new player, can buy an expansion and doesn't require any of the content from previous expansions, you're looking at a stand-alone game. They can disguise it however they like but that's what it is.

[arandomuser]

Please, enlighten us with your insider knowledge of the sub count!

A core part of ANY game is playing the game. The more you play does NOT need to directly relate to player power, and never really has, until recently. Earlier on it was completing challening content, not how many times you could handle spamming easy content.

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Its not JUST that, but by having one system which remained mostly unchanged for the better part of a decade, people understood it and learned it (as you said) while now they introduce new systems every expansion, and typically make fundamental changes mid expansion as well, meaning SOME people feel like they are constantly learning a new system, only to have it removed / changed mid expansion.

sub count ( in legion) i know it sucks atm probably, it felt so lively in legion because the systems worked to incentivize players to play the game and to do that it has to be power related, anima has ZERO player power implications and is a failure forr such reason.

[Couchpotato2013]

What you're talking about is very much WoW centric. Other MMORPGs are doing just fine over time, whether they have a huge population or not is regardless of the point of who they appeal to. This isn't exclusive to MMOs obviously - other games in different genres are hugely popular, and updates continue to pump out either iterating the process or revamping some / all of it. Not all games are like this, of course. Some go the way of WoW, or the way of Rift / EQ2 and fail because of it.

WoW simply has this issue due to the design philosophy. They're designing a game to take more of your time away, and have you come back. Instead of making a game that is enjoyable and all the systems on top of it compliment the time spent instead of feeling like a forced design choice. You can have a game where you play it during a new patch, get all the content you want out of it in 1 - 2 weeks and then wait until the next major patch / expansion.

There is nothing inherently WRONG with systems which reward you for time devoted of course. It's just the method of doing so is detrimental to being fun or parasitic. Destiny 2 (At least, for the last time I played and awhile) has this very same issue - where they force you through content (Instead of being optional) to progress. Sure, you COULD just do the one daily and slowly level up your light level and such but are you REALLY going to do just that? It's the same thing in WoW, being funneled into things shouldn't feel like a chore - it should feel like an open ended choice that isn't restrictive.

I really do think they have doubled down on this because of a fear of players being done. Look at cata and there was the meme of people unsubbing cause nothing to do besides the weekly DS raid. They had already done their rep to exalted long ago in 4.0/4.1. Done molten front as much as rng allowed (the daily guest npcs), they may have even gone back to do all the revamped quests in the old vanilla zones, and then even further got as far as they could doing RBGs/arena. And blizz knew this by suckering people with the year long sub to get diablo 3.

And then the next expansion starts up the differential on gear quality again. Something a bit like ulduar hard modes, but that is just ToES. After that in 5.2, they run wild for years until January 2020 which removes that but then adds more rng (so really not until October 13, 2020 is that all gone completely). 7.5 years of gear ilvl rng to try and drive the gears to keep people subbed.

And this fear of people being down is represented with preventing people from getting account-wide essences and spec specific conduit upgrades until hall of fame is closed for horde. Literally at a minimum, 2000 peoples’ rate of play is what is dictating how blizzard releases the fullest versions of systems (very likely the true version when being first made but then broken to piecemeal it out as a cure to keep people hooked).

So damn tired of it and these days I am actively wanting the whole damned temple of WoW to collapse on blizz cause of their disdain and scorn for players. Only way to make things better.

[arkanon]

sub count ( in legion) i know it sucks atm probably, it felt so lively in legion because the systems worked to incentivize players to play the game and to do that it has to be power related, anima has ZERO player power implications and is a failure forr such reason.

My point is that people relying on "subscription numbers" to bolster their arguement are missing the mark - since they do NOT know what the subs were / are.

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Someone gave an example of pre-WoD gear

And another person said that was still wrong.

There are four extreme paradigms on how design gear.

1. Bake all the things that make gear gear into the gear itself
2. Offload absolutely everything that makes gear into systems/character themselves, thus making the gear completely cosmetic. You can still gain power in this system but progression is entirely outside the gear
3. Strip out everything from gear and have it mean nothing. It is all cosmetic. There is no external system to give power.
4. Bake everything into gear but break it down so completely that progression is quantifiable entirely with just one value, regardless of circumstances.

Very eager to hear a rebuttal of those 4 ways.

Rebuttal? Mate I have literally no idea at all what you are trying to say.

[Couchpotato2013]

My point is that people relying on "subscription numbers" to bolster their arguement are missing the mark - since they do NOT know what the subs were / are.

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Rebuttal? Mate I have literally no idea at all what you are trying to say.

People want simpler gear. And as far as I can see the 4 ways I listed are the most simplest paradigms in which gear can be designed. If they don’t want legion onwards gear (close to 2) and gear being like number 1 (vanilla to mop) was not right either. You aren’t left with many options.

Thus I posted the obvious condescending manner of people wanting thumbs up and down on gear being expressed in point 4.

That is my point.

[arkanon]

People want simpler gear. And as far as I can see the 4 ways I listed are the most simplest paradigms in which gear can be designed. If they don’t want legion onwards gear (close to 2) and gear being like number 1 (vanilla to mop) was not right either. You aren’t left with many options.

Thus I posted the obvious condescending manner of people wanting thumbs up and down on gear being expressed in point 4.

That is my point.

You just seem really confused about what people are asking for - the removal of all the supplimentary SYSTEMS which interact with / impact GEARING. And remember, early on the game had ONE difficulty, not 4, no M+ etc. You seem stuck on the gear itself, rather than GEARING which is what people are talking about - not "hur dur we want dumb items" thats not what anyone is saying.

[Echo of Soul]

You just seem really confused about what people are asking for - the removal of all the supplimentary SYSTEMS which interact with / impact GEARING. And remember, early on the game had ONE difficulty, not 4, no M+ etc. You seem stuck on the gear itself, rather than GEARING which is what people are talking about - not "hur dur we want dumb items" thats not what anyone is saying.

Yes the main complaint is about a bunch of interdependent systems, I have no idea why he's so fixated on gear. We need fewer systems, but those systems could very well be much deeper than they are today so that you can master them over time, this is of course under the assumption that they don't make huge sweeping changes to them on a regular basis.

[GreenJesus]

True, but many of these issues are linked to the half-baked parasitic systems they churn out. This wouldn't be as problematic if they focused on designing content with actual substance that doesn't get scrapped after two years.

Mechagon systems that they probably spent a lot of time on got scrapped in the next patch 5-6 months later just like sharts of domination will.

Whats the point of developing all these things if they are only supposed to last 5-6 months? Wouldn't the time be better spent on implementing a long lasting system that will have further support in future patches?

For example: the jewelcrafting profession in BC. With the introduction of.this profession, jewel socket bonuses, new recipes, different gems you could create etc. Why did shards of domination even exist when the jewelcraftibg profession already exists? They could have just reinpmemented the old jewel set bonuses and meta gems.

[Elias1337]

Do you honestly think that you can rewind the clock to 2006 or so? Don't you see any issues with creating a lot of expensive stuff such as raids that only a tiny % of the playerbase will ever experience, as was the case during Vanilla/BC? That may have worked when the game was the shiny new thing, but guess what - it isn't anymore, and it hasn't been for quite some time now.

Yes becouse unbeaten content have value its psychological aspect of retaining playerbase. So even when not all get to see 100% of raid content there is still giant value of creating desire for players to play game. Nobady gives **** about content what is acessible to everybody. Just like nobady gives **** about rewards what everybody gets. People want exclusivity what they can aspire to.

Bellular did math and there is less than 10% of players doing any sort of raiding above LFR. This is literaly lowest numbers since like ever. Not even WoW least acessible versions had such low raid participation. This beutifully shows how majority of players thanks to acesssibity completly lost any interested in raiding. There isnt that much interest in content what you can and propably alredy beated in LFR mod.

[Nerovar]

Mechagon systems that they probably spent a lot of time on got scrapped in the next patch 5-6 months later just like sharts of domination will.

Whats the point of developing all these things if they are only supposed to last 5-6 months? Wouldn't the time be better spent on implementing a long lasting system that will have further support in future patches?

For example: the jewelcrafting profession in BC. With the introduction of.this profession, jewel socket bonuses, new recipes, different gems you could create etc. Why did shards of domination even exist when the jewelcraftibg profession already exists? They could have just reinpmemented the old jewel set bonuses and meta gems.

Ever since Legion they've been following the same approach when it comes to these systems. Make a lot of expansion specific max level only systems for people to play around with without adding complexity in the form of permanent, embedded systems to the game as that could scare away potential new or returning players.

This mirrors their approach to class design (also since Legion) where they got rid of "permanent" class progression and pruned a lot of stuff in order to give you a few expansion specific tools to play around with while also streamlining the game for new/returning players.

The downsides to this approach are obvious. It feels like we're stuck without character growth while having to relearn the game every two years as they shove the new throwaway systems in our faces. It was already played out in BfA but now with Shadowlands people are starting to really get exhausted by it. I doubt they're going to change their course though. It's much easier to make these throwaway systems and let the players pay for beta testing it for 2 years than to actually come up with new, meaningful avenues of playing the game (or well-integrated abilities/talents when it comes to class design).

[T-34]

I personally don't care for this in an MMO but it's what they do. The fact remains, however, if a brand new player, can buy an expansion and doesn't require any of the content from previous expansions, you're looking at a stand-alone game. They can disguise it however they like but that's what it is.

Blizzard has themselves said that more and more of the wow players are seasonal/expansion types.
That is they play for a while. Take a break. And return again.
For such players there need to be a "new shiny" to make them buy a new expansion and play for some time.
And for such players, as you write, the game should be designed that they start on a level playing-field with the "keep-subbed-all-the-time-players" when a new expansion drops or being able to catch-up very fast when a new patch drops.
That is the reason why we have new systems each expansion that gets scrapped again and again. To attract the "tourists".

[Kumorii]

This - the person you quoted also neglected to mention that in the earlier days, it was 1 difficulty, not 4. So you did your raid / dungeon, and if you got the item, SWEET! if not, you go back and try again. But again, its not just about the core gear - its all the additional systems designed to encourage repeating / spamming the same content endlessly for either currency or just to "keep up".

Previously, if i took a break for a few months then came back, i could dust my character off, and get into some dungeons or w/e, and get some gear then head into the newest content - it still took time, but it always felt productive and meaningful. Now you need to catch up all the various systems as well as the gear, and much of that is just spamming WQ daily / repeating the same mindless content.

I can't relate to this... I switched to DK after 2 weeks of SoD because lack of DK's in raids is a fucking pain.
Took me 5 days isch to be raid ready for Heroic.

Run dungeons for bis conduits. Which is just 3-4 runs. Run m+ and Normal raids / LFR if you're really starving for some easy upgrades + getting shards and maybe some dom pieces. Literally any content gives you renown. When I switched on my mage before I switched on DK that took me 3-4 days and not really hardcore grinding either. Nor did I get priority loot in raids... I think I only got 1 m+ "boosts" with guildies that helped for the +15 weekly. And one hardmode run of taza'vesh for any 233 loot, didn't armor stack though.

To me this "there is so much to do to catch up" is often translated to "unless I have bis everything and highest ilvls i'm not geared". Which is ludicrous.
In fact, due to how easy I found it to catch up I even plan on rerolling DH if we get DK's and no DH.

The only thing I find that's not alt-friendly is anything that has to do with reputation. Which I think should be account bound since a long time ago.

[Alkizon]

Couchpotato2013
There are four extreme paradigms on how design gear.

1. Bake all the things that make gear gear into the gear itself
2. Offload absolutely everything that makes gear into systems/character themselves, thus making the gear completely cosmetic. You can still gain power in this system but progression is entirely outside the gear
3. Strip out everything from gear and have it mean nothing. It is all cosmetic. There is no external system to give power.
4. Bake everything into gear but break it down so completely that progression is quantifiable entirely with just one value, regardless of circumstances.

Initial system of characteristics set itself task of emphasizing character's "role" part within encounter, since game has 2 separate directions of development, then for our particular case, it is also possible to carry out separation between them. So, gear is carrier of these very characteristics, the more cunning/flexible set of characteristics, the more interesting roles are set up, but!... system of characteristics can't stand higher in influence/impact than what talents offer, and even more so to class' mechanics. Thus, main force for effect/method (algorithm) of processing is contained in class, talents are "specializing" class tuning (they don't care about role of character in encanter, just upgrade certain set/generality of abilities/mechanics, Attention! They don't actually add them, but make it more useful/convenient preferred to use/select by player: there is no place for stuff like current "specs" here, the whole set of class mechanics must be available to player and is everyone's personal choice, so "talents same as class abilities distributed by default with specs" are heresy, talents chosen by players are this very specification) while each of mechanics/spells uses this set of characteristics (worn gear) in their basic mathematics.

What follows from this? Secondary characteristics shouldn't give: 1) literal "numbers" (this proc/passive part makes immediate abilities in fact less and less useful = "it doesn't matter what to press, main thing is to have characteristic and you're on a top"); 2) literal mechanics (however, individual items may contain minuscule simple mechanics, which will be added there to detriment of characteristics, and therefore can't "outweigh" these/should vary around a certain power level). Gear itself can't contain anything that upgrades/adds class mechanics.
----
exceptions here are class sets, but there is separate "here" (1+2+3) about them (in short: these can be helpful/encouraging/balancing flexible (since contained in gear) meager "talents" of highest level of progress in selected <PvP vs PvE> content, but it's strongly recommended to continue using just system of characteristics in absence of one of them, which classics tiers successfully did)

What follows in general from all of above: each of elements of this system has its own area of ​​operation and its own tasks, which in no case should be duplicated by any other element/system (as it causes prioritization errors/conflicts and complications in system management).

racial part goes cross-classes (bonuses, base animations), class' (abilities and mechanics) part goes cross-specs (build = talents), talents' part goes cross-roles, since last one is mostly controlled by “momentary choice”: priority of abilities, used gear and other temporary "progress" stuff

Now, with regard to parasitism. Parasitic system tries to devalue, replace/substitute by itself any base one, imitate operation of element in order to be part of the system for lifetime of "carrier", and when this ceases to be possible due to exhaustion/death... well, you know right? You should agree that this is actually what we mean, when use word "parasite", right? Described system is much simpler and more understandable precisely because it's clearly structured and fully integrated into game's body, it's constant part of it, but parasite is tormenting host both during integration and in own life process, so when it leaves body happen voids, damaged parts and wastes of its vital activity, which're often poorly compatible with life *pointing on retail*

ps. In essence, I haven't voiced anything new now, all this has already been said and retold many, many times, but problem of misunderstanding remains to this day, they like to divide system into "independent" pieces, but regardless of their desire, system can be complete then and only when elements have interdependence, otherwise, in order not to cause errors, their interaction should be reduced to 0, which, as you yourself understand, in this case, is task not only difficult and stupid, but also wrong and ungrateful...

[hllfrmththrsd]

The trick here is that the game has changed so much as well as the community as well as the time we're living in and some people just don't notice that. You do not have to play WoW 5-6 hours per day as in TBC or WOTLK. You can play it few days a week for 2-3 hours per day and still be happy. There is so much to do and the threshold to get into mythics or raiding is very low. I literally jumped into 9.1 stuff with a 59 hunter and in a week it was already ready for normal SOD and then in another week I was done with it. Will I play again before 9.2? Probably for a bit, I don't have to play every day and that is the most amazing thing that has happened to WoW.

[Soon-TM]

Yes becouse unbeaten content have value its psychological aspect of retaining playerbase. So even when not all get to see 100% of raid content there is still giant value of creating desire for players to play game. Nobady gives **** about content what is acessible to everybody. Just like nobady gives **** about rewards what everybody gets. People want exclusivity what they can aspire to.

Bellular did math and there is less than 10% of players doing any sort of raiding above LFR. This is literaly lowest numbers since like ever. Not even WoW least acessible versions had such low raid participation. This beutifully shows how majority of players thanks to acesssibity completly lost any interested in raiding. There isnt that much interest in content what you can and propably alredy beated in LFR mod.

It doesn't have @#$&. This is 2021, people won't grind their asses off (and less so Git Gud™) in order to access a basic feature of the game such as raids, least of all if the reason is that developers' pipeline is still using the timeframes of 15+ years ago.

Frankly speaking, I can't think of a better coup-de-grâce for the game than (re) implementing such an obsolete approach.

[jazen]

Probably that they don't feel powerful or special enough anymore, and that just grinding valor points (Which like many other 'forced activities' the player has long outlived needing to actually do for its content) is boring and lifeless.



You know huge talent trees are literally the definition of spreadsheet design right?

You figured that out too, eh?

[GreenJesus]

Ever since Legion they've been following the same approach when it comes to these systems. Make a lot of expansion specific max level only systems for people to play around with without adding complexity in the form of permanent, embedded systems to the game as that could scare away potential new or returning players.

This mirrors their approach to class design (also since Legion) where they got rid of "permanent" class progression and pruned a lot of stuff in order to give you a few expansion specific tools to play around with while also streamlining the game for new/returning players.

The downsides to this approach are obvious. It feels like we're stuck without character growth while having to relearn the game every two years as they shove the new throwaway systems in our faces. It was already played out in BfA but now with Shadowlands people are starting to really get exhausted by it. I doubt they're going to change their course though. It's much easier to make these throwaway systems and let the players pay for beta testing it for 2 years than to actually come up with new, meaningful avenues of playing the game (or well-integrated abilities/talents when it comes to class design).

What new players? Who is actually going to be new to WoW end game in 2021? Who are they fooling? With this old of a game you need to focus on player retention not rampant growth phase of acquiring new players. Who would play WoW in current year if they didn't grow up with the game and get addicted?

[Nerovar]

What new players? Who is actually going to be new to WoW end game in 2021? Who are they fooling? With this old of a game you need to focus on player retention not rampant growth phase of acquiring new players. Who would play WoW in current year if they didn't grow up with the game and get addicted?

It's probably more returning players but yeah, the point is that they're designing the game in a way that is focused on getting as many players (new or returning) to buy their new expansion since that's where all the money is. Therefor they design the game in a way that allows it to be immediately approachable without having to grind through old content first which means that every expansion is basically its own game with its own systems that don't require long-term investment in the game. @MoanaLisa expressed the idea succinctly earlier in this thread.

Another funny thing that just occurred to me is that their overreliance on parasitic design seems to have carried over to the story department as well.

[Elias1337]

It doesn't have @#$&. This is 2021, people won't grind their asses off (and less so Git Gud™) in order to access a basic feature of the game such as raids, least of all if the reason is that developers' pipeline is still using the timeframes of 15+ years ago.

Frankly speaking, I can't think of a better coup-de-grâce for the game than (re) implementing such an obsolete approach.

What are talking about unbeaten content. Not about grinds. Current grinds exist becouse how easy and acessible has game become. Acessability shrinkes content longetivity becouse acessability = making game easyer for masses = players consume content faster = grind exist to increase content longetivity. Without them most people would run out of content withing days.

You have people complain about fact that grinds are there to keep them playing. No **** sherlock when without it players would instantly quit after finishing lfr and lfg.