STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[Akka]

People in LFR are surpisingly good. But I'm talking about the mechanics etc of the bosses. The bosses have FAR more health %-wise in LFR, and hurt more and have FAR more oneshot mechanics than anything in TBC.

I take from the fact you haven't answered that you were playing with complete strangers, so the lack of coordination could very well be the actual explanation.
You might also be right, it's been a very long time I haven't played any LFR, but let me say I've my big doubts.

[Caprias]

The major thing is that the very top and very bottom of the players are the ones that's currently in game still playing for the most part. The ones who still very much like the gameplay core and regulry return or stay, and the ones who really don't know any better.

What kind of feedback do you think people like this would give? Also it makes for skewed metrics because while it appears a bigger % of players are maybe successful at true endgame, in fact it's just that the middle ground part went lost in time.

If someone still plays the game and keeps raiding/running m+/pvp, while he may complain in forums he's still playing so from a marketing/revenue standpoint the game has done the right thing.

Everything seems to be actually changing now because the hit in playerbase has been basically the biggest in the story of the game, plus all the external stuff. Suddendly people had options to play and wow wasn't the only game worth their time etc.

Gamers have so many great games to choose from nowadays that the majority will always play every and any game extremely cyclical, they'll be there when fun content dropped and be gone in a few weeks, that's the "80%", under no circumstances and with no dev. team in the world will we ever see tbc/wotlk levels of retention (and even back then we don't know for sure since retention rates never got released...)

So in a way Shadowlands biggest failing wasn't the dreaded "systems" or ridiculous statements like the thread title, I'm pretty sure it was simply the patch cadence.

Legion was a lot worse system wise in many regards, but why would a casual care about that when by definition they don't interact or try to understand those systems in the first place? It's like the conduit energy uproar, this sucked for only a extremely small amount of players.

What Legion got right though was the insane patch cadence, you don't think too much about bad system design when there's constantly fun shit to do.

[cparle87]

I recommend taking a look into a mirror, because the only person trying to redefine "difficult" to suit their purposes is yourself. That's why you're trying to redirect here rather than actually address the fact that your idea that Animal Crossing is difficult is balls and that everyone desires challenge and difficulty or they don't have fun.

But go ahead, take a stab at describing exactly what is "difficult" in Animal Crossing. You said rare fish and catching bugs, I explained how neither of them is difficult in any way. I told my wife about this conversation and her first thought was "You push the button to swing the net, you catch the bug. What's difficult?"

This is the same game you play with the word "casual". You define things in a way that only you believe and that has nothing to do with reality, and then claim those things support your positions.

I'll go ahead and "take the win" though and be done with you. You have nothing of value to say and when backed into a corner try to huff and puff like you are here, all because you honestly know your position is bollocks.

I'm still laughing at the idea that Animal Crossing is difficult

Except he wasn't trying to redefine difficult nor was he saying Animal Crossing was difficult. You're putting words in his mouth.

What he said, was that the game had a difficulty curve. And if any part of the game is tougher than another part, he's correct.

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Gamers have so many great games to choose from nowadays that the majority will always play every and any game extremely cyclical, they'll be there when fun content dropped and be gone in a few weeks, that's the "80%", under no circumstances and with no dev. team in the world will we ever see tbc/wotlk levels of retention (and even back then we don't know for sure since retention rates never got released...)

So in a way Shadowlands biggest failing wasn't the dreaded "systems" or ridiculous statements like the thread title, I'm pretty sure it was simply the patch cadence.

Legion was a lot worse system wise in many regards, but why would a casual care about that when by definition they don't interact or try to understand those systems in the first place? It's like the conduit energy uproar, this sucked for only a extremely small amount of players.

What Legion got right though was the insane patch cadence, you don't think too much about bad system design when there's constantly fun shit to do.

This first paragraph needs to much more emphasis. People like to compare now and then, sub numbers, and such, etc. And it's only part of the picture. If both Wrath and Shadowlands had 200,000 quit in the last quarter, but 250,000 new people tried Wrath but only 50k new people tried Shadowlands of course it's going to look like Shadowlands was worse, even though they both lost just as many people.

[deenman]

You must not have played the game during the original Classic era. You would have to sit and eat after every single mob. You would get attacked by anything and everything that was hostile towards you from a great distance. It was very much harder then. They have made this game so much easier over the years due to a majority of the player base being casuals rather than hard-core raiders.

they made leveling easier,but the thing is,i always find it funny when people call vanila wow hard,when in fact at the time it was ridiculed as the casual care bear mmo,having zero of the ''hardcore'' features most of the popular mmo's at the time had like xp loss on death,pvp body looting,before wow i played kalonline,you couldnt level in many outdoor areas without help,a death at a high level could set u back weeks,2 quests per lvl,you didnt have upgrades constantly showering you etc

[Johnjohn]

Its funny people are mentioning the hardcore and ultra casual being the audience for WoW now. I find that to be very true.

As crazy as it sounds I have started playing everquest again as I find it's a better experience than WoW for a gamer like me (somewhere in between hardcore and casual). This is insane and not something I could ever imagine 10 years ago.

[jackoff]

WOW Token killed the quality of community in this game.

[Battlebeard]

I take from the fact you haven't answered that you were playing with complete strangers, so the lack of coordination could very well be the actual explanation.
You might also be right, it's been a very long time I haven't played any LFR, but let me say I've my big doubts.

If you put strangers in BT, they might also struggle. But if you put pugs who easily clear Illidan in current LFR, I'm sure they struggle even more. LFR idiots are still kinda better than casual dad gamers in many cases.

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WOW Token killed the quality of community in this game.

If the content wasn't so hard, the WoW token wouldn't be needed, as more people could achieve success without paying. And if they ban the token, people just find other ways to pay for boost anyway.

[Celement]

WOW Token killed the quality of community in this game.

Sorta... it did make the boosting side of things explode and solidified a caste system. Breaking intobeig able to pug 15s or mythic raiding is far harder then becoming a heroic raider in mop or cata.

[cparle87]

Yup.the further they moved from this the less popular the game got. But this is how the high-end community wants the game to be so that's how it will be, they want low sub numbers so they can keep the endgame to themselves.

Do we really need to explain correlation does not equal causation again?

And please, give the tinfoil back.

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If the content wasn't so hard, the WoW token wouldn't be needed, as more people could achieve success without paying. And if they ban the token, people just find other ways to pay for boost anyway.

Weren't you a poster in the "why is the default setting for WoW braindead easy" thread?

[Mardux]

Yup.the further they moved from this the less popular the game got. But this is how the high-end community wants the game to be so that's how it will be, they want low sub numbers so they can keep the endgame to themselves.

Why are you pretending that the removal of welfare badges is what makes the game less popular? I can understand why the removal of free gear is a downside for you personally, but to claim its the reason for the decline as if what you are saying is a fact... Lol.

[Battlebeard]

Do we really need to explain correlation does not equal causation again?

And please, give the tinfoil back.

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Weren't you a poster in the "why is the default setting for WoW braindead easy" thread?

I don't remember, if I was, I wasn't complaining it's too easy, rather defend it.

[cparle87]

Why are you pretending that the removal of welfare badges is what makes the game less popular? I can understand why the removal of free gear is a downside for you personally, but to claim its the reason for the decline as if what you are saying is a fact... Lol.

He doesn't under correlation doesn't equal causation. It's a major problem.

[Royru]

Why are you pretending that the removal of welfare badges is what makes the game less popular? I can understand why the removal of free gear is a downside for you personally, but to claim its the reason for the decline as if what you are saying is a fact... Lol.

It seems fairly easy enough for me. Why does anyone play this game? To progress their character. If you shut that off for the majority of players (casuals) they will leave.

You can think whatever you want, but the most popular versions of this game has always been the most casual friendly.

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Its funny people are mentioning the hardcore and ultra casual being the audience for WoW now. I find that to be very true.

As crazy as it sounds I have started playing everquest again as I find it's a better experience than WoW for a gamer like me (somewhere in between hardcore and casual). This is insane and not something I could ever imagine 10 years ago.

It is true 100%. If you’re the type of player who wants to progress your character but you also don’t have enough time out of the week to farm all these needless time wasting systems in the game then you’re screwed.

You either have to not care about gearing at alll or you have to spend more time on the game to keep up.

That’s why I will always love games like destiny 2. It speaks to that type of player. There IS a point in that game where you can sit and go “I’m fully geared, there is no more unless I just want to play for fun”. That and all of their gearing process is entirely centered around weeklies that take very little time to finish and don’t require a premade group to finish.

[MoanaLisa]

He doesn't under correlation doesn't equal causation. It's a major problem.

Every day it's the same thing: "The thing I hate most about the game is X which is why the subscriber base is reclining." It's BS of the highest order.

[Relapses]

WOW Token killed the quality of community in this game.

That's a random thought which is wholly improvable.

The community killed the quality of the community. If the token didn't exist, there'd still be just as much boosting... you'd just have to contend with a lot more Chinese gold selling spam on top of everything else.

[Celement]

That's a random thought which is wholly improvable.

The community killed the quality of the community. If the token didn't exist, there'd still be just as much boosting... you'd just have to contend with a lot more Chinese gold selling spam on top of everything else.

I don't agree. There would still be boosting but it would be far more limited in scope. I also don't think you would see quite the extreme divide of the playerbase . It would be divided down get me wrong but not so sharply.

[Relapses]

I don't agree. There would still be boosting but it would be far more limited in scope. I also don't think you would see quite the extreme divide of the playerbase . It would be divided down get me wrong but not so sharply.

I was boosting before the token existed. The amount of people that we boosted pre-token is the same exact amount of people that want to boost now that the token exists. The only thing that's different now is that things like Discord have made it far easier for potential buyers to find the best deal for their virtual currency. The demand is the same.

[cparle87]

Every day it's the same thing: "The thing I hate most about the game is X which is why the subscriber base is reclining." It's BS of the highest order.

I think it's only matched by "Can we agree <insert thing I don't like> is the reason WoW is dying". Slightly different phrasing, but seems more ego filled to me.

[VMSmith]

Except he wasn't trying to redefine difficult nor was he saying Animal Crossing was difficult. You're putting words in his mouth.

What he said, was that the game had a difficulty curve. And if any part of the game is tougher than another part, he's correct.

Ok, I'll say this one last time for people like you that didn't bother to read the entire exchange before proferring your two cents:

There is NO difficulty curve in Animal Crossing.

None.

Nada.

Zip.

It never gets more difficult. At any point. It's also not difficult in the first place. I have addressed both over the course of the conversation, though you could only be bothered to consider one post. I get that, paying attention to an entire conversation is hard and jumping in to be pedantic is fun.

But there's no difficulty curve in Animal Crossing.

I hope that clears things up for you. If you're unsure how rare fish cannot be more difficult than common fish, please see my earlier posts.

[cparle87]

Ok, I'll say this one last time for people like you that didn't bother to read the entire exchange before proferring your two cents:

You seem to mistake a small curve for no curve at all.

And thank for the ad hominem attack. I read all your posts back to the beginning. Your entire argument was that end-game content was no more difficult than the very first things in the game, which is clearly untrue. It doesn't matter if the things the player has to do become more difficult, the items become more difficult to find either by location or rarity, or any other metric. That is a difficulty curve.