Maybe the game should be designed for mythic raiders?

[Osmeric]

Yes it is. Becouse designing game around majority and casuals will only make game boring for everyone including casuals. Do you know why? Becouse content with high participation have to have no challenge or any sort of gameplay. Like current leveling on retail is made easy, nonchallenging and acessible so casuals can have fun right? Then why are casuals bored when this casual content is supostu be for casuals?

I am vastly entertained by the attempt to argue that casuals are happier when the game isn't designed for them, but instead is designed for you.

Content designed for casuals might be just right for casuals, even if it's incredibly easy for you.

[arkanon]

Yeah but only you think that and all we will do is argue about it. We are at an impasse. We don't have to convince each other.

But we can prove how many people raid mythic, can you prove how many people play 80+ hours per week? Because your entire argument crashes and burns without that piece of information.

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I am vastly entertained by the attempt to argue that casuals are happier when the game isn't designed for them, but instead is designed for you.

Content designed for casuals might be just right for casuals, even if it's incredibly easy for you.

This is based on the assumption that you can say what a casual is. There are casuals who only do pet battles - casuals who play massive hours per week, casuals who play a few hours per week. Casuals who pvp, casuals who PvE. Casuals who play in guilds, casuals who play solo. So which "casual" are you talking about?

[Osmeric]

This is based on the assumption that you can say what a casual is. There are casuals who only do pet battles - casuals who play massive hours per week, casuals who play a few hours per week. Casuals who pvp, casuals who PvE. Casuals who play in guilds, casuals who play solo. So which "casual" are you talking about?

I was responding to an argument which asserted that most players don't do difficult content, and that content has to be greatly tuned down for high participation.

The "casuals" I am talking about are this thundering herd of customers who shy away from difficult content.

Somehow, he argued that making the game more difficult is better for these customers. It's a classic bit of hardcore sophistry.

[NineSpine]

You realize your proving my argument not contesting it right? My whole argument is top down designing...

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I mean I enjoy the little side stories of LoL wow just has the most dumpster tier writing I've ever seen and I'm counting self insert smut novels.

We are fighting thanos atm with miss " I will never serve " and Kel'thuzard...my poor boy kel'thuzard they mangled the shit out your character and story.

You said that there has never been a single feature designed for casual players that is good. I listed tons of great features made for casual players. Your response is to just say you were right, even though I proved you wrong.

[arkanon]

You said that there has never been a single feature designed for casual players that is good. I listed tons of great features made for casual players. Your response is to just say you were right, even though I proved you wrong.

IMO, some of the most well liked features were clearly designed around causal players - they are also some of the most hated, but what im not sure about is what percentage of players loved/hated what feature.

Mage Tower is probably the best example of casual friendly content that was quite well received, but obviously it wasnt as popular as some think, as they have never gone back to it (until now with time walking, which obviously is not the same thing). Something like Island Expeditions was a HUGE cockup on Blizzards part. It SHOULD have been amazing casual content - it should have scaled from solo up to 5 players, or 8 players. It should have had its own progression system around m+0 kinda quality, to give solo players and small casual groups of friends a drop in / drop out style system. It should have had no time limit, i never understood why they added time pressure to something clearly designed for casual players. And most of all, by far the biggest mistake, it should NEVER have been appealing from a power perspective to "hardcore" players.

They basically missed the mark on all counts, but it had HUGE potential and i wish they had revisited it later on with a strong focus on casual players.

[arkanon]

This, to me, is the major problem with WoW for casual players of my ilk (people who don't do organized content). In order to fulfill this desire of Mythic raiders not to have to do LFR/LFD the rewards of matchmade content have been made so unappealing that there is little point in participating in matchmade content beyond one time just to see the fights.

Other games have solved this problem but Blizzard seems utterly incapable of doing so as well.

I just don't see how anyone wins when high end competitive players feel forced to do content designed for casual players - obviously no one has a gun to their head, but you know what i mean. Mixing casuals and hardcore players can be a good thing, but when one party is onyl there to get it done as fast and efficiently as possible and gtfo, and the other is learning how to play, watching tv, talking to friends, and just there to smell the roses and have a look around, its a recipe for aggression and frustration.

[Ielenia]

Yes it is. Becouse designing game around majority and casuals will only make game boring for everyone including casuals. Do you know why? Becouse content with high participation have to have no challenge or any sort of gameplay.

No. Not really. Those are two completely unrelated things. You're confusing "engaging" with "challenging", and those two terms are not the same thing. Something can be engaging without being challenging.

Like current leveling on retail is made easy, nonchallenging and acessible so casuals can have fun right? Then why are casuals bored when this casual content is supostu be for casuals?

Wrong. Leveling was not made easier to be "fun for casuals". Leveling was made easier and shorter so new players (and those leveling new alts) can more quickly reach max level and participate in the endgame content with their friends and guild.

[Bloomer]

I am willing to go full hardcore raider if they make it so raids give you the best kind of loot, uncontested by M+ loot.

[Caperfin]

I all onboard for this, a hard game usually brings a long new player who want a challenge.

[exochaft]

No. Not really. Those are two completely unrelated things. You're confusing "engaging" with "challenging", and those two terms are not the same thing. Something can be engaging without being challenging.

Yeah, this is something I've been preaching for years. Unfortunately, Blizz has even seemed to have lost the distinction between the two to some degree, as many of the most annoying mythic fights/mechanics solely go for "challenging" at the expense of "engaging". Not many people even within the mythic raiding community base their sense of engagement solely upon the challenge aspect (if it even is a factor at all, which it isn't always), and it's even less when you consider the entire raiding community. Many raiders from across the spectrum have enjoy raiding in the past back when the difficulty and challenge wasn't nearly as high as it is nowadays.

While I have gotten some engagement out of some difficult fights, it's usually that the mechanics are interesting or the fight as a package is fun... not that it's hard. My fondest memories of raiding the hardest content in the game hasn't been from anything recent at all, especially when the design of raids has become increasingly focused on making the fights more difficult rather than interesting. A symptom of this direction is the proliferation of parity-style mechanics where if one person fails a mechanic at any given time, it's an instant wipe or it's better to wipe than try to continue... and that's bad in my opinion. This issue is amplified even more when said mechanics are randomly chosen, removing the ability of the raid to adjust to their strengths versus pray it doesn't pick certain people at certain times. Older fights didn't punish the raid nearly as much in this regard, where failing a mechanic on an individual level may set the raid back but was still recoverable unless you screwed up repeatedly.

The reality is that there's a lot of people that have the skill potential to clear a mythic raid, but it's generally a case of different speeds and methods of learning the fights. My job back in my hardcore raiding days was to identify the learning methods and issues with particular raiders and resolve their issues. By today's standards, people would write off these raiders as "trash" or "no skill" people, but the truth is that people learn in very different ways. As with teaching students in a class, understanding the needs of the individuals and tailoring the lesson to include all of them will ultimately get everyone on the same page. Now, how does this relate to the topic at hand? The way Blizz has been designing raids (especially the parity mechanics and amping up difficultly over time) actually makes it harder for people who don't learn fast or in the same way to actually mythic raid, even if they may have been former raiders who could clear all the hardest raid content. One of the many reasons I stopped mythic raiding was because it was becoming increasingly harder to train raiders due to how the content has changed over the years.

Ultimately, something has to give, as the current Blizz trajectory is only going to lead to even less mythic raid participation over time. Any solution that will likely be beneficial to fixing mythic raiding and raiding as a whole to appeal to a wider audience is going to cause pain upon implementation, as people tend to not embrace change no matter what changes may occur. I still think the best solution is to decouple power rewards (or more specifically power gains, i.e. higher ilvl gear) from mythic raiding altogether in order to address many broad issues that affect every aspect of the game, and perhaps a return to Ulduar-style HM encounters in place of an entire mythic raid.

[MoanaLisa]

The reality is that there's a lot of people that have the skill potential to clear a mythic raid...

This and the rest of your quote is quite true. Would that guilds train invite lesser experienced players in and help bring them up. For the most part they don't. Most recruiting ads I see need players that are ready to roll on session one.

Skill doesn't exist in a vacuum however. The social barriers to entering mythic raiding are high and most players will not bother with it for their own reasons. Skill, lack of interest, inability to meet a schedule, the frustration of being losing your raid seat (if one is in a guild) or being rejected from a group a dozen times (if not in a guild) all contribute. In the end the notion that most players aspire (or someone else deciding the should aspire) to mythic raiding is false. Most people either have no interest or whatever interest they once may have had has been snuffed out by the difficulties of just getting through the door of the club. I've seen this from both sides and frankly entering the mythic raiding entry gauntlet isn't worth the trouble.

Any time anyone says that casual players generally want to be challenged is either ignorant or knowingly lying. There are of course exceptions but relatively few.

[Otaka]

The more I think about it the more it seems like everyone wins if blizzard focuses on mythic players. What do mythic players want? More dungeons and raids with decently tuned classes and nothing else.

How does everyone else win? Simple you just scale down the content and you get easier modes of what is designed and everyone gets more then they have now.

It isnt free mind you... such a system wouldn't tolerate choreghast, conduits, renowned, covenants , corruption and the assorted trash aimed at 80 hour a week " casuals" but I think this bold new approach might really revitalize the game.

The game has been designed around hardcore raiders for the past 5+ years already... so it wouldnt "revitalize" the game at all, instead it would keep killing it.

Casuals outnumber mythic raiders by a long shot and have always outnumbered. Catering to the minority has never done the game any favors.

The director of the game is a hardcore raider himself... Ion was a hardcore raider pre-wow and has been the raid encounter designer for many years until he was promoted to game director, and we know what has happened since. :P

[Raven]

Isnt it already designed for Mythic ? most of the stuff added to the game are for Raiders or people that want to do Mythic dungeons, i would say that they need to keep adding this stuff but also start adding more for Pvpers and for more casual playing people.

[Lolites]

The game has been designed around hardcore raiders for the past 5+ years already...

more like EVER... since vanila wow was sold as "casual" mmorpg...
until ulduar hardmodes (not even all of them) there was not even such thing as "hardcore" raiding...

[thunderdragon2]

I recall no raider asking for a leveling revamp nor a garrison...

the revamp i agree on but lots wanted player housing garrisons were just blizzards way of doing that tho it went poorly

[Venziir]

I recall no raider asking for a leveling revamp nor a garrison...

You recall no one asking for the leveling to be fixed or the addition of player housing? Impressive.

[NineSpine]

Those casual players win when their content is rewarding as well as fun.

As for the high end players that just can't help themselves ... well, that's their problem to deal with. Other people shouldn't have their gameplay neutered to satisfy the compulsion of obsessives that can't control themselves. Also, I'd liken high end play to pro sports ... if you want to be the best then you gotta do what it takes. Time in the gym, film room, studying plays, drills and practice, it's all necessary if you want to play at the highest level and you don't whine about it, you take pride in it. Even if it's easy or tedious or unenjoyable for you, because when you signed up for "high end" play you signed up for all of it, not just the part you actually enjoy. The alternative is to step back and realize that that "high end" might not be for you if you can't do what it takes. And I mean "you" in a generic sense, not "arkanon"



I feel that it's best not to mix the player types in content. If one is there because they want to be and one is there because they feel "forced" to be, who is the problem here? And yet, it's the casual players who want to be there that are suffering for the benefit of that minority that just can't help themselves.

In other MMOs I play the gear is acquirable in pretty much any content you choose to participate in, and yes, I mean the BiS top-of-the-line gear. In SWTOR you can do Heroic Missions every day and have 306 gear. I'm sure there's some discrepancy between what's available in Ops simply because of set abilities, but it's not so huge that not having it locks you out of content. The trick is that the gear comes quicker from the harder Flashpoints and Ops and whatnot than it does from Heroic Missions. So the "high end" player can just do the content they like and get the gear quickly while the casual player can do the content they like and get the gear eventually and everyone is happy and no one feels "forced".

In STO most of the best gear comes from reputations, and again, doing harder content rewards the currencies necessary for that gear quicker than the easy content. But everyone gets there eventually. And no one has to do anything they don't want to do.

WoW is so focused on stratifying the "haves" and "have-nots" to stroke some folks e-peens and save high end players from their own OCD that they're giving casual players nothing to play for. That's why I left WoW. There was nothing to do at my level that was rewarding in any fashion, other than Korthia dailies and that's just fucking boring.

You hit on the exact problem. Blizzard tries to do these two things at once:

1. All content should be relevant for high end players.
2. A massive gear ladder where the best only comes from the most extreme content.

What this results in is most content turned into weird chores in order to keep it relevant to high end players, but also that the same content can’t reward average players too much.

The solution is clear: Be like virtually every other MMO and allow everyone to attain BiS or at least very close to BiS gear through average activities. You can do away with chore-like rewards and high end players will be rewarded much faster from the content they do so the average content won’t seem appealing.

The way to do this is to flatten the stupid, disruptive, and eventually broken gear curve we deal with every expansion. At any given time there only needs to be two tiers of end-game gear. One tier you get quickly from high end content or from long term commitment to other content, and one tier you get from other average activities.

[Echocho]

A mythic raider is simply someone who cares about gear so much that they're willing to go through anything. The game shouldn't have more focus on gear, it should have less.

Make the best gear in the game accessible to everyone over time and let people focus on doing what they enjoy instead.

If someone wants to spam LFG all day long in order to get their weekly piece of mythic gear, let them.

[HCLM]

A mythic raider is simply someone who cares about gear so much that they're willing to go through anything. The game shouldn't have more focus on gear, it should have less.

Make the best gear in the game accessible to everyone over time and let people focus on doing what they enjoy instead.

If someone wants to spam LFG all day long in order to get their weekly piece of mythic gear, let them.

Another delusional, clueless, mindless garbage comment coming from someone who shouldn't even be allowed to open forums without parental control... If you are not doing mythic raid content, u don't need mythic gear.

Mythic raiders dont go 'through anything' (except from the people taking a part in world first race.) many mythic raiders play literally 2-3 hours a day. They're just smarter and more productive than average WoW players, who spend their whole session hitting the wall in Stormwind/Orgri because doing anything more difficult is beyond their comprehension.

The solution is clear: Be like virtually every other MMO and allow everyone to attain BiS or at least very close to BiS gear through average activities. You can do away with chore-like rewards and high end players will be rewarded much faster from the content they do so the average content won’t seem appealing.

Point ONE, successful MMORPG that does that, except from GW2. Every single mmorpg out there requires you to do more difficult content, if you want to get better gear.
if anything you can get 'pre-raid' bis gear. Not bis gear.

[Swnem]

Another delusional, clueless, mindless garbage comment coming from someone who shouldn't even be allowed to open forums without parental control... If you are not doing mythic raid content, u don't need mythic gear.

Mythic raiders dont go 'through anything' (except from the people taking a part in world first race.) many mythic raiders play literally 2-3 hours a day. They're just smarter and more productive than average WoW players, who spend their whole session hitting the wall in Stormwind/Orgri because doing anything more difficult is beyond their comprehension.



Point ONE, successful MMORPG that does that, except from GW2. Every single mmorpg out there requires you to do more difficult content, to get better gear.
if anything you can get 'pre-raid' bis gear. Not bis gear.

I can tell you of 3. GW2, FFXIV, SWTOR. It's the ones i know best. I'm sure there are more.