To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[Selah]

I know you didn't @ me, but this is supposed to be an RPG, it's all about progressing your toon. And the only meaningful venue of progression left in the game is the power one, so players will naturally desire more and better gear.

I mean, that's definitely a part of it. People do flock to RPGs for a host of different reasons but power progression is a staple for sure.

That said, I asked the question I did because I want to challenge that idea. It's just not accurate and clearly is detrimental to the health of the game when that's all there is.

[Beefkow]

I've seen legitimate feedback on wow forums during legion/bfa, lots of theory crafters on class design.

Ignored.

For the most part, but not a lot of interaction.

But seriously, if I'm paying money for a product, I have the right to complain or provide feedback or just simply shut up and play the game.

[Subzu]

Stop watching E celebrities and comparing your opinion with theirs, they're entertaining, key word enterianment, they don't play the game like the standard player would to be immersed in the content created.

Players like Preach have proven how disconnect they are with the actual player, go watch his LFG videos.

[Swnem]

Is that because what Blizzard has been doing is... good? Therefore all the discontent players that left are wrong? Wow! How many times has that argument worked for you? I think i can draw a profile.

[exochaft]

I know you didn't @ me, but this is supposed to be an RPG, it's all about progressing your toon. And the only meaningful venue of progression left in the game is the power one, so players will naturally desire more and better gear.

That's actually part of the problem, as it's basically the only path of progression... when ideally there should be multiple paths of progression beyond just power. As a simple example, this is why tons of people clamor for playing housing or customization games: it's a form of progression that doesn't revolve around power, but it's something you can work on and improve/customize to your heart's content.

As an addendum, Blizz feels the need to make everything tied into player power, which either forces players into content they may not want to do in order to feel like they're not playing the game wrong or wears out players with content that they do want to focus out (tied with certain aspects, this makes their preferred activities work or a chore). As an example, I feel Torghast would've been much better served by not having player power attached to it at all. Not only does this allow players to play Torghast when they want rather than as a chore or 'fomo' when it comes to power gains, but also you could also be free of restrictions imposed upon a system that are made in consideration for power gains (such as timegating and mechanical/design aspects).

One of the long-term goal that should have priority is adding more activities into the game that are fun and engaging without having to worry about gaining power from them. I would hazard a guess that a lot of the burnout that players may experience when playing WoW focuses around the issues of only being focused on power progression in almost every aspects of the game, and the forced feeling of playing the game wrong when you don't do all those aspects. Currently, WoW is designed around keeping the player in the game as long as possible, which is not healthy at all for the long-term health of the game.

[Dastreus]

Imagine being so hyped up on copium you just assume people are bailing because the game isn't what everyone wants it to be and not because it's a cesspool of garbage.

[Quaade]

@Quaade

Out if curiosity, why do players need more "power" at all? We have our level cap increases and a varied means of getting gear. Why do we need more than that? Wouldn't it be better to instead build or improve upon features that already exist or will contribute to more content?

Yeah, raids and dungeons are fun but what were some of the best features in the last couple expansions? Mechagon, class order halls, time walking, horrific visions (save the mandatory nature), mage tower, Suramar, allied races, deaths of chromie. None of that has anything to do with power and goes to show that we don't need to increase player power every patch and every expansion.

Simple psychology, higher numbers always feel more fun. The players express that they want this without realising until after the fact that what they need is for the higher numbers they want to be enabled without feeling like another job or the challenge itself.

Time Walking and Mechagon lead to an increase in power. Before TW items were nerfed in SL they were slightly better than similar HC items. Doing TW repeatedly was also a viable way to level and thus escape another round of doing things you've already done before. Thus an increase in power. Mechagon was one to non-raiders eventually. The punch cards were also an increase in power. If you went for those you also had to spend time there, however, only had to spend it once as their improvement was tied to rep instead of a currency that could always be increased in amount.

Deaths of Chromie and the Mage Tower is an example of the devs, different devs I'll remind you, giving people what they need instead of what they want. They gave the feeling of challenge without offering an increase in power as it gave bragging rights in the rewards if they were obtained early.

The current devs solely give people what they think the people want based on their own biased interpretation of what they say they want, and their central bias is time spent = challenge.

[blapdris]

Peak in wow was like 10 million subs? more 12?
And now its 1 million. Maybe less.

Why design a game for the 1 million players instead of the other 9 or 11?

If you can design a game with 1 million whales then that will make a lot more money than 12 million randoms.

Additionally, and no one seems to understand this, you can't just make a game by doing exactly what players want. If it were that simple then every games company would just do market research and do whatever ticked the boxes and make billions. It obviously isn't that simple. People can't really envisage the broader implications of what they say they want.

Now Blizzard may have gone too far in the other direction, but pretending that you can make a perfect game out of a load of half-assed ideas players come up with is just very obviously unworkable.

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Imagine being so hyped up on copium you just assume people are bailing because the game isn't what everyone wants it to be and not because it's a cesspool of garbage.

You cunts who tell other people what to think get really annoying. You can fuck off and play your retarded cat girl game designed for Japanese schoolgirls, but don't tell me what I do and do not enjoy.

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Players like Preach have proven how disconnect they are with the actual player, go watch his LFG videos.

Preach is part of an exceptionally obsessive hardcore group of mythic raiders that are around 1% of the player base. He never really spoke for anybody but them.

[Soon-TM]

pretending that you can make a perfect game out of a load of half-assed ideas players come up with is just very obviously unworkable.

A very successful dev said that players are (paraphrasing) great at identifying problems, but terrible at solving them. Therefore, if many players are complaining about X, it's up to the devs to figure what really lies behind the complain, and address it, instead of half assing solutions to X and calling it a day - if they actually cba to provide any solutions whatsoever, that is.

[shise]

The point is that they were right. They are not every player, but they do represent a huge part of the player base when they talk... like it or not.
y
Blizzard has been doing fuck up after fuck up through 4 years now, even though players asked them not to because (reasons included). They laughed (quite literally in some cases), they ignored it and moved on. A year later, it was proven that the players were right and Actiblizzard was wrong.

That is ok for a few times, but when that is all they do... well.. players get tired and give up.

[saeadeb]

Why don't streamers making big bucks want to go get sexually harrassed. Big brain.

He'll I'd be more afraid of the screeching twitter crowd. Imagine sitting around in your undies making millions and deciding to go work at a shit pay company with no hr department to speak of. And if hr ever did anything it would probably be to fire you for liking something a republican said on Twitter.

[LordKharon]

Sure they could hire a well known streamer. Take for example Bellular. Woud he go work at Blizzard for "normal" pay and bonuses? 99% no.

But they could offer him a deal good enough to make it happen. For example:
- Very good money & pay a good sum for him to leave his current work for a limited time (so they can continue without him until he returns)
- Total control over WoW for 1 expansion cycle (with option to continue if successful), everything from story to systems/rewards, raids/dungeons, PvP, whatever... assuming he wants to stay true to WoW and not change it to a battle royale or something like that

Will Blizzard do that? Hell no chance, but they COULD if they really wanted...

[Zantera]

Sure they could hire a well known streamer. Take for example Bellular. Woud he go work at Blizzard for "normal" pay and bonuses? 99% no.

But they could offer him a deal good enough to make it happen. For example:
- Very good money & pay a good sum for him to leave his current work for a limited time (so they can continue without him until he returns)
- Total control over WoW for 1 expansion cycle (with option to continue if successful), everything from story to systems/rewards, raids/dungeons, PvP, whatever... assuming he wants to stay true to WoW and not change it to a battle royale or something like that

Will Blizzard do that? Hell no chance, but they COULD if they really wanted...

Why should they give the control of the game to a guy who hasn't achieved anything in it? They could just as well pluck any random in LFR gear.

[Naiattavain]

I would design a rogue that wins 80% of the time.

[crusadernero]

Stop watching E celebrities and comparing your opinion with theirs, they're entertaining, key word enterianment, they don't play the game like the standard player would to be immersed in the content created.

Players like Preach have proven how disconnect they are with the actual player, go watch his LFG videos.

Very much this. Whenever these big streamers play ANY MMORPG, they will always have a different experience than your random lonesome player. Preach has started playing FF14 and im pretty sure he has a different experience than most players would have. He already has a established community that will chime in at any given time for anything.

Most people dont have that.

The streamers experience these games very differently for better or for worse. Asmongold had a horrid time in classic, but I bet most people had a decent time. He was ganked and griefed 24/7 all year long, the rest of us dont experience that.

Also, these streamers 99% of the time come with theyre own subjective viewpoint. Most of them dont base alot of arguments into in than "I dont like it, so I wont play it".

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Sure they could hire a well known streamer. Take for example Bellular. Woud he go work at Blizzard for "normal" pay and bonuses? 99% no.

But they could offer him a deal good enough to make it happen. For example:
- Very good money & pay a good sum for him to leave his current work for a limited time (so they can continue without him until he returns)
- Total control over WoW for 1 expansion cycle (with option to continue if successful), everything from story to systems/rewards, raids/dungeons, PvP, whatever... assuming he wants to stay true to WoW and not change it to a battle royale or something like that

Will Blizzard do that? Hell no chance, but they COULD if they really wanted...

Theres one thing making 900000 negative youtube videos yearly about wow, its something very different actually creating the game. Belluar has his role, and thats complaining about everything all the time for views. It works great, so no wonder he does it!

[melodramocracy]

OP, you realize that most if not all of the devs on this game started out by being players of...

*drumroll*

...other mmo's, right?

Game design is not some deity-given capability, and to assume that some player ideas aren't better than what's currently live, or that Blizzard takes no mis-steps with this game is pretty hilarious.

Also, Homer more or less designed an upscale SUV, so the point you're trying to make has fallen short.

[Soon-TM]

Why should they give the control of the game to a guy who hasn't achieved anything in it? They could just as well pluck any random in LFR gear.

Do you realise that the same could have been said about, idk, Ben Brode, Ghostcrawler, Tom Chilton or even Ion himself? None of them had "achieved" anything in gaming when they were hired.

[Zantera]

Do you realise that the same could have been said about, idk, Ben Brode, Ghostcrawler, Tom Chilton or even Ion himself? None of them had "achieved" anything in gaming when they were hired.

That's fair, I just don't get the obsession with Bellular. The guy's been making negative videos about the game for like a decade now and I just don't see what someone like him would add at all.

[Zantera]

I don't really like forced chores either but it's funny how much crap SL gets for it even though Anima is entirely cosmetic/optional and doesn't affect player power at all, Torghast is something you can be done with in like a month to get your r6 legendary (and then its only 2 runs a week), especially compared to Legion or BFA who were much worse in that regard. You never capped AP in BFA so running Islands was a thing until the end, Legion had terrible RNG with legendaries and TF on top of the AP grind and wasn't really fixed until the latter stages of the expansion.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this makes SL better but the grinds aren't as bad as they have been. Just comparing Legion and SL with each other and the legendary & AP situations. In SL you can actually target the legendary you want and get it fairly quickly - in Legion it was all down to luck and you could play 12 hours every day and still not get your preferred legendary for months. AP in SL doesn't affect your character's power really at all, in Legion you were semi-forced to spam Maw of Souls for 5 hours a day if you wanted to pump out numbers. (I still like Legion more than SL but that doesn't mean SL can be better in some areas)

[Selah]

Sorry for the slow reply but wanted to spend time properly working through this reply.

Simple psychology,

I continue to hear this, the idea the numbers going up equals satisfaction. Yet, I've never seen the literature on this. Do you happen to have this data by chance? I'm not saying that to be difficult but I do have a genuine curiosity. The reason being, is it really the idea of "bigger number equals more fun" or is it the numbers are representative of achievement and the achievement is what is rewarding? There is quite the difference between the two and I think it'd be good if we knew the difference.

higher numbers always feel more fun.

Kinda back to my earlier point, is it that or is it achievement that is represented by the number? If that's true, why do RP communities exist? Why do people care about story and lore? Why do PvP players care about winning? Why do pet battlers care about winning? Why do raiders and M+ people care about clears, beating bosses, and having fun/interesting encounters? Why do people care about the races they play? Why do they care about the visuals of their spells and transmog? All of that seems to fly in a very contrary manner to that idea.

The players express that they want this without realising until after the fact that what they need is for the higher numbers they want to be enabled without feeling like another job or the challenge itself.

I'm having a hard time following this statement. Are you saying that players don't care about the challenge and instead only care if the number goes up?

Time Walking and Mechagon lead to an increase in power.

I'd argue that you could've removed all forms of power rewards from Mechagon and still have roughly the same kind of experience and reception. There would be an obvious small drop in payers that were only there for the essences and the punch card but that wouldn't degrade its quality. We need to be very careful of the idea that "engagement equals positive player reception." Especially when player power is involved.

TW inherently has rewards, as it should being dungeon content, but that's not what makes it a good feature which we'll get into below.

Before TW items were nerfed in SL they were slightly better than similar HC items.

Okay, and that has no bearing on the conversation as that is typical of releasing "updated" gear. That's just tuning.

Doing TW repeatedly was also a viable way to level and thus escape another round of doing things you've already done before. Thus an increase in power.

No, that is not correct. Taking a different road to the same destination does not change the destination. You're gaining levels either through TW or another means. Doesn't mean the levels are more valuable through TW than questing on a per level basis. Meaning, level 30 through TW will be the same as level 30 through questing in regards to your player power (or in the context of this situation, making your numbers go up).

To give another example, if your goal is to make it to destination C, and you can take either path A or path B, no matter what path you take you're still going to arrive at destination C. The only difference is your experience.

Mechagon was one to non-raiders eventually. The punch cards were also an increase in power. If you went for those you also had to spend time there, however, only had to spend it once as their improvement was tied to rep instead of a currency that could always be increased in amount.

Again, I'd argue that you could easily remove all forms of player power progression and still arrive at the same player reception. It's a good piece of content regardless of player power rewards.

Deaths of Chromie and the Mage Tower is an example of the devs, different devs I'll remind you, giving people what they need instead of what they want. They gave the feeling of challenge without offering an increase in power as it gave bragging rights in the rewards if they were obtained early.

This statement seems to run opposed to your statement that higher numbers means more fun. In fact, this statement would actually rather support my argument that its the achievement represented by the numbers that the players are enjoying as opposed to seeing numbers get bigger.

The current devs solely give people what they think the people want based on their own biased interpretation of what they say they want, and their central bias is time spent = challenge.

Just want to make sure I'm understanding your statement correctly, you're essentially saying that the devs have a thinking error that is time spent equals challenge? If that is what you're saying, then I'll say that, it sure feels like that. That might not be the case though, obviously there has been a lot of dysfunction behind the doors at Blizzard for years now and it's come to ahead recently.

Without having people who have worked there to openly discuss with us the difficulties of the production of WoW we truly don't know what's actually going wrong. As a community, the best we can do is point to the issues of the game and make suggestions about the issues we see. The internal issues at Blizzard have to be sorted out internally at Blizzard, the unfortunate reality is that we just do not see what's happening behind closed doors over there. As the massive lawsuit has made apparent.

There's one more thing I want to bring up. The "needs" of the players is going to widely vary depending on what content players enjoy. What a raider will "need" will vary widely from what an RPer will "need", which will be further different yet from what a PvP player will "need", as it goes for pet battlers, completionists, M+ people, transmog collecters, achievement hunters, and every possible different way you can fractionate the different ways people play and *enjoy* the game. There's a level of hubris that comes with the idea that the devs know what the players "need" in order to enjoy the game. It leads to such statements like "you think you do but you don't" which was an erroneous statement as we all observed some time later. It is not for the devs to decide how people enjoy the game, and if they subscribe to that idea and continue to perpetuate that mode of thinking then they will continue to hemorrage players to the competition where they *enable* players to enjoy the game in the way they want (assuming it doesn't damage the core experience of the game).