When did WoW convince itself Raiding is the only thing that's important?

[ProphetFlume]

Always?

What do other mmos have for endgame that equal what wow has for raids?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

But there are already quests... with text... in places... so this is just putting the quests and their text and their places together. This requires adding nothing now. It's just a matter of organization.

World quest don’t have the same amount of quest text of daily’s, don’t have any real story relation, and are spread through out lvling areas unlike most mop esc daily’s.

You already know all of this you are the one who pointed it out, it isn’t just a matter of organization.

[NineSpine]

Agreed but there are still complications that to me make sense. For example, a season cap or some sort of fairly quick catch up mechanism makes sense - it’s no fun to be permanently behind because you started late or went away for a week.

I also think it makes sense that the cap goes up more quickly with harder content, or maybe you get bonus currency that week (and yes I know this contradicts the earlier point that catch up should be quick, I believe trivially so).

There's no reason to have catch up or a different cap for different people. These are the types of needless complexities that have made WoW's systems such a clusterfuck. You don't need to solve every problem. WoW is built of problems that came from solutions to other invented problems. They stack and stack and stack until the whole game is busted because nobody said "Maybe we just change the underlying issue rather than adding more complexities."

The absurd number of raid difficulty settings is a great example of this:

Well, now we've got one difficulty and 40 people per raid and its really tough for a lot of people to get into it. Let's reduce the size.
Well, a lot of people still aren't doing the raids, so let's add a lower difficulty called Normal and make the current difficulty Heroic.
Well, some people like 10 and some like 25, so let's have both at both difficulty levels.
Well, a lot of people still don't do raids, so let's add another easier difficulty called LFR.
Well, a lot of people can't get groups together so let's make the raids be flexible and scale with group size.
Well, we need the highest difficulty to be tuned properly so we need to make that a fixed size, let's add a fourth tier.

What a fucking mess. Stacking solution on top of problem created by the previous solution over and over and over and over again. M+ has the same issue, this huge mess of ideas jammed together to solve invented problems.

Do you know why you see coming in late and needing catch up gear as a problem? Because it is a problem. You aren't wrong. But why is it a problem? Because there's too gigantic a spread of ilvl at any given time. That's an invented problem, and it should be cut off at the root, not built upon. And if we don't want to solve that problem, we shouldn't overcomplicate other systems to accommodate it. We should accept the flaw and move forward.

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World quest don’t have the same amount of quest text of daily’s, don’t have any real story relation, and are spread through out lvling areas unlike most mop esc daily’s.

You already know all of this you are the one who pointed it out, it isn’t just a matter of organization.

I didn't say to recreate MoPs daily system. In fact, I never appealed to that system a single time. You are the one that keeps prattling on and on and on about it and won't stop. Just like I said before, I'm talking about the tired on my old blue car and you are rating and raving about how I shouldn't paint my new car blue. I don't want to. I just want the tires. I don't need to take the whole package.

[Miffinat0r]

There's no reason to have catch up or a different cap for different people. These are the types of needless complexities that have made WoW's systems such a clusterfuck. You don't need to solve every problem. WoW is built of problems that came from solutions to other invented problems. They stack and stack and stack until the whole game is busted because nobody said "Maybe we just change the underlying issue rather than adding more complexities."

The absurd number of raid difficulty settings is a great example of this:

Well, now we've got one difficulty and 40 people per raid and its really tough for a lot of people to get into it. Let's reduce the size.
Well, a lot of people still aren't doing the raids, so let's add a lower difficulty called Normal and make the current difficulty Heroic.
Well, some people like 10 and some like 25, so let's have both at both difficulty levels.
Well, a lot of people still don't do raids, so let's add another easier difficulty called LFR.
Well, a lot of people can't get groups together so let's make the raids be flexible and scale with group size.
Well, we need the highest difficulty to be tuned properly so we need to make that a fixed size, let's add a fourth tier.

What a fucking mess. Stacking solution on top of problem created by the previous solution over and over and over and over again. M+ has the same issue, this huge mess of ideas jammed together to solve invented problems.

Do you know why you see coming in late and needing catch up gear as a problem? Because it is a problem. You aren't wrong. But why is it a problem? Because there's too gigantic a spread of ilvl at any given time. That's an invented problem, and it should be cut off at the root, not built upon. And if we don't want to solve that problem, we shouldn't overcomplicate other systems to accommodate it. We should accept the flaw and move forward.

As you said before the simple solution is the best. All content regardless of what it is rewards badges, collect enough you get BiS. Certain content gives more others give less let the players decide how they want to play. Done and Done.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I didn't say to recreate MoPs daily system. In fact, I never appealed to that system a single time. You are the one that keeps prattling on and on and on about it and won't stop. Just like I said before, I'm talking about the tired on my old blue car and you are rating and raving about how I shouldn't paint my new car blue. I don't want to. I just want the tires. I don't need to take the whole package.

So when you said old daily quest hubs had all of those things you weren’t actually talking about wow at all you were talking about some hypothetical daily’s that never actually existed?

[NineSpine]

So when you said old daily quest hubs had all of those things you weren’t actually talking about wow at all you were talking about some hypothetical daily’s that never actually existed?

Did I say "I miss having massive amounts of quest text and only a small part of the zone being where the dailies are!"

No, I said none of that, so maybe it would be more productive to engage with the things I actually said rather than trying desperately to misinterpret me.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Did I say "I miss having massive amounts of quest text and only a small part of the zone being where the dailies are!"

No, I said none of that, so maybe it would be more productive to engage with the things I actually said rather than trying desperately to misinterpret me.

You see I did that but then the things you actually said didn’t match up with what you wanted to change your arguments to leading to this convoluted mess.

So pretty much, you think the old system was better, but you were also never talking about the old system, but you think they should take the amount of quest and add them to the old system, but they also shouldn’t apply the parts of the old system (which you were never talking about) that actually made it better then the current system, and that means they should I just cluster quest together.

[Coniferous]

As you said before the simple solution is the best. All content regardless of what it is rewards badges, collect enough you get BiS. Certain content gives more others give less let the players decide how they want to play. Done and Done.

You need catch up though. It’s no fun to join 2 months into a tier and be 2 months of badges behind for the next 6 months. At some point it feels like a penalty that you can’t ever catch up to the curve.

[Miffinat0r]

You need catch up though. It’s no fun to join 2 months into a tier and be 2 months of badges behind for the next 6 months. At some point it feels like a penalty that you can’t ever catch up to the curve.

I guess the way out of that would be to increase the badge count on content from the previous tier so you can run it. Even then if that's the issue it seems relativley fixable compared to the cluster we have now.

[NineSpine]

You see I did that but then the things you actually said didn’t match up with what you wanted to change your arguments to leading to this convoluted mess.

So pretty much, you think the old system was better, but you were also never talking about the old system, but you think they should take the amount of quest and add them to the old system, but they also shouldn’t apply the parts of the old system (which you were never talking about) that actually made it better then the current system, and that means they should I just cluster quest together.

I specifically called out the aspects of the old system I liked, and said I would like to go back to those aspects. Your response to this has been to keep telling me how OTHER parts of the system are bad ideas. That is not constructive.

Again, I want to take my tires off my old blue car and put them on my new red car, and you are ranting and raving about how I shouldn't paint the red car blue.

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You need catch up though. It’s no fun to join 2 months into a tier and be 2 months of badges behind for the next 6 months. At some point it feels like a penalty that you can’t ever catch up to the curve.

Then don't go six months without an update, and don't make the cap so high that it takes six months to get to.

Again, the approach to problem solving that you are going with here is exactly what screwed the game up.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I specifically called out the aspects of the old system I liked, and said I would like to go back to those aspects. Your response to this has been to keep telling me how OTHER parts of the system are bad ideas. That is not constructive.

You are right you did specifically call out what aspects you liked, but then you threw all those away and said that the only difference was rather the quest were clustered or not.

And when I pointed out that only mop really used said aspects and how doing so would cost more time/money to make you said you weren’t even appealing to the old system.

[Sucralose]

WoW design was doomed the moment the game was changed to accommodate those enraged that someone else had larger numbers then them. That was the first sin so to speak.

[Coniferous]

Then don't go six months without an update, and don't make the cap so high that it takes six months to get to.

Again, the approach to problem solving that you are going with here is exactly what screwed the game up.

Adding catch up is very simple. Grandly pronouncing that from now on updates should be less than 6 months apart is totally unrealistic.

Nothing screws up tech more than unrealistic timelines.

[NineSpine]

Adding catch up is very simple. Grandly pronouncing that from now on updates should be less than 6 months apart is totally unrealistic.

Nothing screws up tech more than unrealistic timelines.

Weird how other MMOs can pull that off.

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You are right you did specifically call out what aspects you liked, but then you threw all those away and said that the only difference was rather the quest were clustered or not.

And when I pointed out that only mop really used said aspects and how doing so would cost more time/money to make you said you weren’t even appealing to the old system.

I want the quests to be made up clusters that are story-interrelated, but are still on rotations to make them stay interesting. These areas don't need to be only for the dailies. They can be reused version of other areas.

What's the issue?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I want the quests to be made up clusters that are story-interrelated, but are still on rotations to make them stay interesting. These areas don't need to be only for the dailies. They can be reused version of other areas.

What's the issue?

so just what we have now but with more quest text and grouped together.

so it still cost blizzard more to make as it has to be story interrelated, but we don't get new area's, just sounds like a worse version of mop that cost more then WQ.

[bagina]

I agree. WoW was never meant to be a raiding game, this obssessive fixation on raiding ruins the game and raidbabs are obnoxious as hell. Waste of effort and resources if you ask me.

[Sucralose]

I agree. WoW was never meant to be a raiding game, this obssessive fixation on raiding ruins the game and raidbabs are obnoxious as hell. Waste of effort and resources if you ask me.

All the raiders wanted was to be left alone... then came badges,valor, lfr, and more. The players wanted to be raiders so blizzard gave them what they wanted. Sadly all they did was envy raiders they didn't actually want to become them.

[NineSpine]

so just what we have now but with more quest text and grouped together.

so it still cost blizzard more to make as it has to be story interrelated, but we don't get new area's, just sounds like a worse version of mop that cost more then WQ.

I specifically said it doesn't need to be more quest text.

The fact that this argument has devolved into "But I think it might take five minutes to write a paragraph about this, so they can't afford it" says volumes about the quality of your argument.

I've worked in game development. The idea that quest text, even if it was at issue here, is a big financial barrier is straight up delusional and deranged. It takes literally 20 times as much time to script a quest than it does to write a paragraph, easily. Every quest probably takes someone something like 20 hours of designer time to produce, and you think the un-voiced quest text is this massive financial barrier, putting aside that I've said like 18 times that no extra quest text is needed.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I specifically said it doesn't need to be more quest text.

The fact that this argument has devolved into "But I think it might take five minutes to write a paragraph about this, so they can't afford it" says volumes about the quality of your argument.

I've worked in game development. The idea that quest text, even if it was at issue here, is a big financial barrier is straight up delusional and deranged. It takes literally 20 times as much time to script a quest than it does to write a paragraph, easily. Every quest probably takes someone something like 20 hours of designer time to produce, and you think the un-voiced quest text is this massive financial barrier, putting aside that I've said like 18 times that no extra quest text is needed.

If you want story interrelated you need more quest text the world quest "this guy is bad kill him" wouldn't cut it.

and yes it does take more time to script the quest that how ever doesn't mean that a business as stringy as blizzard would want to either hire new people or move existing people onto writing quest as even though it might take five minutes to do one or two it would take hours to make up story's around them and then to break those story's up into quest.

It wouldn't be a massive Financial barrier but it would still cost more and for little gain.

[Kyriani]

Adding catch up is very simple. Grandly pronouncing that from now on updates should be less than 6 months apart is totally unrealistic.

Nothing screws up tech more than unrealistic timelines.

FFXIV puts out content patches every 3-4 months.

They handle catchup well too. There's 2 tiers of currency. One has a weekly cap and one doesn't. Weekly capped currency buys you the equivalent of current raid tier gear. The non-capped let's you buy last tier's gear and the ilvl gap between tiers isn't huge. Latecomers can easily get as much of the non-capped currency they need to get all the previous tier's gear, while at the same time accruing the capped currency to start getting the current tier's gear. As an alternative to that, they can simply buy the current tier of crafted gear which is only 10 ilvl lower than the current tier gear. When a new tier comes out, the old tier gets bumped down to cost the non-capped currency, and multiple avenues exist to get that currency.

It's a simple yet elegant formula that FFXIV has stuck with since Heavensward and beyond. It's incredibly easy for anyone just hitting level cap to be endgame ready regardless of when in the lifecycle of an expansion they hit the cap. Some criticize it as too formulaic and "uninteresting" but I appreciate the simplicity and consistency. I know what I'm getting and when I'm getting it. No RNG bullshit and no massive gear gaps between those that raid and those that don't.