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

[Coldkil]

Context.

Oh yes. Let's remeber he's the guy in a WR30 guild and since he now only plays one night he's a casual, and casuals do at least +20s.

[crusadernero]

I suspect (just an assumption) that the players who spend all their time in low keys would probably be just as happy in LFD. And theres already is a ilvl overlap as LFD/LFR, even low keys rewards can be outpaced by world content.

However, the perfect balance (IMO) would see M0 queable via LFD and M+ keys squished to prevent massive ilvl overlaps.

Basically my point boils down to “If I can get 252 gear from playing solo in ZM, why can’t I get equivalent rewards from queable group content”.

Yes and yes. Thats a great idea. As been said, you can already grind out good gear in world content now already. An activity that is quite boring. If they push that, let people queue for m0 for it too. Squish the amount of key levels to. Theres no need for 20+ keys. IF they really want to keep it, let people queue for m+ 1-5 levels and be rewarded accordingly.

My biggest gripe with wow these days is also that it sucks donkeykongass to level an alt to max lvl only to be faced with boring grinds you gotta do over again. It usually gets better later on in an xpac, but still.

Still gotta farm boring stuff in order to be anywhere near relevant.

[Stornholio]

Why is end game content so hard? I’m seeing people having a hard time to pug normal raids. Is this the game that most people thrive in? The “average” are the soul of the community, this game is becoming depressing.

I remember the time in which the most amount of people were actually enjoying the game, and the community was thriving, the content was extremely easy with the exception of four bosses (Mimiron, Anub, Yogg-3/0 and LK heroic) during WotLK. When Wrath was released the hardest boss was Sartharion +3 Drakes, any decently organized group could kill it, I know we did it.

I remember really good top 1000 guilds wiping on heroic in 9.0, even after trying Beta on supposedly easy bosses on heroic. Is this the game that you REALLY want? A month after the Jailer was killed, 17 guilds have killed it. What psychos do we have working at Blizzard at the moment?

People take satisfaction in knowing that they’ve “beaten” the game by defeating the hardest encounters. That’s not even a dream to most players. Make the highest gear attainable by all within three weeks of release of patch; The top players already have the titles, mounts, achievements and glory. Stop licking their boots so hard. Game is in a terrible state. I remember Sunwell Plateau was the most brutal raid at the time, even the trash was a nightmare. They nerfed everything by 30% (don’t recall exactly) allowing most people to do it WELL ahead of Wrath. That should happen three weeks after the first kill across ALL difficulties. And just tune down bosses… What is this? I’m typing this as I leave of a heroic diefest on Anduin, and people weren’t awful.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

I love reading posts like this. and specifically the comparison to WotLK - an addon that didnt have 4 difficulties for raids yet. It's fine the way it is. If you can't clear heroic or mythic, then you ain't good enough. You won't need that gear anyway, as you most likely won't be able to clear future mythic raids aswell.
There is SO much content for casual and less skilled players out there, with rewards that exceed the difficulty of and required dedication to the content anyway.
It's already sad enough that there is no unique gear for the hardest content (I really hope possible Dragonflight legendaries wont be obtainable at Normal/RF difficulty), other than recolors. The best and most dedicated deserve so much more imo.

[potis]

I suspect (just an assumption) that the players who spend all their time in low keys would probably be just as happy in LFD. And theres already is a ilvl overlap as LFD/LFR, even low keys rewards can be outpaced by world content.

However, the perfect balance (IMO) would see M0 queable via LFD and M+ keys squished to prevent massive ilvl overlaps.

Basically my point boils down to “If I can get 252 gear from playing solo in ZM, why can’t I get equivalent rewards from queable group content”.

The problem isnt the tool, its the quality of the players thats the problem.

Even when i will create a +5 or 7 key with my just dinged alt, cause i know i am decent and i wont fail, i will find alts of 3k rating mains, which i am gonna take.

I wont care for the returner wannabe special snowflake that never did anything proper in the game since i am given the choice to pick cause even during "dead periods" where we are waiting for the next patch/expansion, there are over 1mil characters to choose form that are better than the average choice.

Forcing LFD on that content will simply make it miserable for the same people that are complaining and think they are some special entity that is entitled to play with others because he logs on, which has always been the problem with WoW.

People that refuse to socialize for various reasons and have steady play groups, complaining about it.

[Dakara]

The problem isnt the tool, its the quality of the players thats the problem.

Even when i will create a +5 or 7 key with my just dinged alt, cause i know i am decent and i wont fail, i will find alts of 3k rating mains, which i am gonna take.

I wont care for the returner wannabe special snowflake that never did anything proper in the game since i am given the choice to pick cause even during "dead periods" where we are waiting for the next patch/expansion, there are over 1mil characters to choose form that are better than the average choice.

Forcing LFD on that content will simply make it miserable for the same people that are complaining and think they are some special entity that is entitled to play with others because he logs on, which has always been the problem with WoW.

People that refuse to socialize for various reasons and have steady play groups, complaining about it.

Would never “force” LFD onto Keys, people will always have the option of making a pre-made. My point however, was that if LFD were extended to M0 with an ilvl progression system similar to what’s found in World Content, players who exclusively run lower keys likely wouldn’t mind the ilvl overlap as they’d probably be quite happy with LFD.

LFD has never been “forced” on anyone so I’m not quite sure where that notion has originated from. There has always been the option of making your own groups and that would never change… in fact it might even work in your favour because the only people queuing for your +5 would be 3k .io VP farmers as all the “casual special snowflakes” would be in LFD.

Personally, I don’t socialise at all doing world content… in a dungeon you might at least say hello. But then again, I’ve never found the need to socialise much in WOW outside of my Friends and Guildies. Very little socialising goes on in Key pugs either, apart from maybe 20+ keys that require Discord.

[Nite92]

WoW is not hard, but mechanically complicated. You have to follow a rotation (not even perfectly ad dps checks are not that strict in most cases) and react to predetermined scripts. You fail because you have no reliable info about what happens when, or because someone else in your group does the movement wrong or because multiple mechanics overlap for no reason.

Mythic raiding guilds don't wipe 20,30,100, or 200 times on a boss because it is "easy".

[Coldkil]

Mythic raiding guilds don't wipe 20,30,100, or 200 times on a boss because it is "easy".

You don't get the point.

I never said WoW is easy. The core gameplay is pretty easy (follow a rotation, avoid bad stuff and kill the boss) but the additional mechanics involved make the core gameplay more complicated (you can use it as a synonym for "harder") and thus making it challenging. The challenge is not a problem - it's how it presented to players. You can make a fight hard in multiple ways - by increasing coordination required, by reducing the time available to react, by making some mechanics completely mandatory (wipe mechanics) etc and combine everything of that.

Where it goes wrong is that the game over the years has increased dramatically the complexity of encounters because at high level people were destroying content, and was also helped by addons that over time became more and more powerful. While it's fine for the cutting edge of players, this design dripped down to lower difficulties, due to both Blizzard designing the encounters from "top to bottom" and making the gimmick mechanics integral part of the fights. Plus, they didn't really improve the way mechanics are presented, instead they tried to make addon "useless" with the only result of making them much much better at solving problems for the player.

Basically, it's not even really a problem now (only actually started to be recognized in 9.2) but shows a trend that's not sustainable for much longer. Mythic in the end is onlu a subsection of a subsection of players in the game. Actually now it may not be now since the most of the "middle tier" is gone, but it's not what/who the game should be designed for (in general terms. People fully deserve challenging and competitive content in WoW).

There's also a whole another level of issues between different contents giving wildly different rewards for whatever reason. But that's just because WoW still sticks to a pure vertical progression that only works if the progression path is linear. When they started to add catch-up mechanics to make more people go in raids and after that M+ which is basically competing with raids (and winning so far) it should have been a point where the verticality should have been at least discussed.

EDIT: maybe it's not really clear from my posts, but i am all for making prestigious content and rewards even more prestigious and "elite". I just think increased ilvl is not the right solution for how the game is now and how the playerbase is. People do not realize that taking away the excuse of "he's more geared than me so he can do harder content, i have no time for that" would actually show how many people is actually interested in the challenge and who actually only cares about the reward.

[Skildar]

WoW is not hard, but mechanically complicated. You have to follow a rotation (not even perfectly ad dps checks are not that strict in most cases) and react to predetermined scripts. You fail because you have no reliable info about what happens when, or because someone else in your group does the movement wrong or because multiple mechanics overlap for no reason.

What distinction do you make between hard and mechanically complicated?

[Necromantic]

Mythic raiding guilds don't wipe 20,30,100, or 200 times on a boss because it is "easy".

WoW is an easy game, no matter how anyone tries to rationalize it. And there are people who try mythic raiding who do wipe that many times on bosses because either 1) They're just not very good. 2) They know if you die enough times, you'll eventually get it. To me, the latter is more common and not very fun.

[Coldkil]

What distinction do you make between hard and mechanically complicated?

Soulslike games are not mechanically complex but are hard. They are at the core games of hit/dodge, but you have to learn boss patterns and subtle visual cues. Their reliance on player reflexes and learning curve makes them hard - you have small time windows to attack and dodge and you have very few mistakes available due to the high damage monsters do, the huge bosses hp pools and your relitively small life bar. Plus the stamina system just doesn't let you just spam attacks ignoring the boss. The same can apply for example to Monster Hunter games aswell.

Mechanically complicated is a 4x or a strategy game. You may have multiple units, or different ways to approach the game to win (depending on what the devs introduced) so it's not like you have to instantly react to events happening, but every choice you make may have unforseeable consequences in the future. SO you need to have a strategy, be ready to change it depending on other events etc. They can be hard as hell in multiple ways (by severely limiting your resources, or putting you in a disadvantage from the very start, etc) but in a very different way to the previous category.

This to say that hard/challenging and complex are two different concepts that may or not may be present at the same time. You can make things more complex but not necessarily harder, or make things harder without more complexity.

In my opinion, Blizzard choose the way of "making things harder by making them more complex". Which was fine in the past since old raid encounters were really barebone in terms of mechanics, but i'ts not something that can go on forever (as in more and more complex fights). There are multiple concurrent causes for this, addons being more and more powerful, they wanting to always provide a challenge to better and better players, etc.

What i think is that most of it is only relatively an issue. One thing in particular though is causing most of the problems - and it's their "top-down" design where encounters are made for Mythic first, then trimmed down for HC and Normal. It works if mechanics are simple, but when you reach a certain level of complexity in the fight mechanics, trimming them down becomes harder and harder without basically breaking them.

One example is Fatescribe. Even in normal, the circles mechanic was terrible because it just needed one single character not doing the job and it was an instant wipe. I actually liked the mechanic, i didn't like how in normal it just made people not wanting less skilled players in the party because their reaction time was too slow. I actually like the mechanics, but because i find it pretty easy to do - but i'm not everyone. Plus, in HC it was complicated by the fact that you couldn't just send your more able players do it and call it a day, but you had to setup not one but two weakauras so people could easily identify that they were the people in charge and where to go, something that even using voice chat would take too much time resulting in a straight out wipe. And people yet failed it, even with all the tools in their end.

I'm sorry for these long posts, but the topic at hand is basically huge. There's a lot of interconnected gears that all have to run, and touching one of them can screw all the others if not done well. And again, i'm not calling for the game to be easier. A lot of the difficulty in WoW actually comes from the fact Blizzard after 18 years still doesn't know how to properly use visual indicators that are not the top right corner buffs and debuffs. What does it take to make the Anduin debuff make people glow yellow and purple instead of having DBM that puts a chat bubble on you with a star or purple symbol? Or have that same mechanic circle be not grey on a grey floor? Or in Lords of Dread make the shadows differently colored if they're fake? It's stuff like this that leaves me baffled.

[potis]

2) They know if you die enough times, you'll eventually get it. To me, the latter is more common and not very fun.

Its more like, the weaker players need to train the fight longer, and then someone else fucks up also, so instead of 40 wipes and a kill, the Mythic Boss takes 200. (i am not talking undergeared rushed Top 50, but the average guild).

So if weaker player 1, wipes you 10 times, and there are also total of 5 weaker players, wiping you 10-12 times each, and then out of the other 15, someone will eventually fail also out of the 50 tries, or other tries, you end up with a very easy 100 wipes, after gear.

Its not fun, and its the reason i cant be bothered raiding past HC, before Sepulcher, our total raid wipes to clear HC were like 100-120 for the whole raid, the average Mythic Guild has that for the 3rd or 4th boss, fuck that.

[Echo of Soul]

Just to be clear, i was NOT attacking your suggestion, i was referencing a comment made earlier, by someone else:



I tried very gently to explain that, in my experience, this is NOT what "casuals" have been asking for - in fact many complain that the covenant loot, although quite decent compared to early expansions, was quite powerful, it was extremely fast to obtain, or hard gated, both of which where not enjoyable to them. Now obviously this isnt the case for everyone, not even everyone who identifies as "casual", but it does seem to be a strong majority who agree.

- - - Updated - - -



So which is "harder" - going to the gym 5 times a week at whatever time works for you to casually walk on the treadmill for 60 minutes a day for 5 months - OR - going to the same gym 3-4 times a week, at set times and days, for 4 hours per session, and doing intense total body workouts and spin classes with 10-20 other people who rely on you being there, for 3 months?

Because my argument remains the same - both require SOME effort, both require SOME dedication, and the main difference between what is more manageable will be determined by the individual. For example, many years ago, in early days of TBC, i worked shifts, so because of that, i often could not make raid nights, sometimes for 2-3 weeks in a row, depending on my roster. This made raiding very challenging, FOR ME PERSONALLY but not because of the raids themselves, it was a logistic thing for me personally. That meant that i was more likely to obtain loot other ways, farming heroic dungeons, crafting, etc, because it fit with my lifestyle better.

But i would never argue that farming motes or heroic dungeons was/is HARDER than raiding.

It's completely irrelevant. Casuals don't deserve any gear no matter how much effort they put in. Fuck em, if they don't want to do premade group content like a normal person they should quit the game.

[Skildar]

-- snip --

I'm very glad you took the time to write all of this.

I often attribute difficulty just to the severity of failures and mistakes and how much time is offered to you to process the information and communication before reacting, etc.

It usually means very different things to a lot of people and it's quite hard to put the right words on it, so thanks again for this

[conkrete]

Soulslike games are not mechanically complex but are hard. They are at the core games of hit/dodge, but you have to learn boss patterns and subtle visual cues. Their reliance on player reflexes and learning curve makes them hard - you have small time windows to attack and dodge and you have very few mistakes available due to the high damage monsters do, the huge bosses hp pools and your relitively small life bar. Plus the stamina system just doesn't let you just spam attacks ignoring the boss. The same can apply for example to Monster Hunter games aswell.

Mechanically complicated is a 4x or a strategy game. You may have multiple units, or different ways to approach the game to win (depending on what the devs introduced) so it's not like you have to instantly react to events happening, but every choice you make may have unforseeable consequences in the future. SO you need to have a strategy, be ready to change it depending on other events etc. They can be hard as hell in multiple ways (by severely limiting your resources, or putting you in a disadvantage from the very start, etc) but in a very different way to the previous category.

This to say that hard/challenging and complex are two different concepts that may or not may be present at the same time. You can make things more complex but not necessarily harder, or make things harder without more complexity.

In my opinion, Blizzard choose the way of "making things harder by making them more complex". Which was fine in the past since old raid encounters were really barebone in terms of mechanics, but i'ts not something that can go on forever (as in more and more complex fights). There are multiple concurrent causes for this, addons being more and more powerful, they wanting to always provide a challenge to better and better players, etc.

What i think is that most of it is only relatively an issue. One thing in particular though is causing most of the problems - and it's their "top-down" design where encounters are made for Mythic first, then trimmed down for HC and Normal. It works if mechanics are simple, but when you reach a certain level of complexity in the fight mechanics, trimming them down becomes harder and harder without basically breaking them.

One example is Fatescribe. Even in normal, the circles mechanic was terrible because it just needed one single character not doing the job and it was an instant wipe. I actually liked the mechanic, i didn't like how in normal it just made people not wanting less skilled players in the party because their reaction time was too slow. I actually like the mechanics, but because i find it pretty easy to do - but i'm not everyone. Plus, in HC it was complicated by the fact that you couldn't just send your more able players do it and call it a day, but you had to setup not one but two weakauras so people could easily identify that they were the people in charge and where to go, something that even using voice chat would take too much time resulting in a straight out wipe. And people yet failed it, even with all the tools in their end.

I'm sorry for these long posts, but the topic at hand is basically huge. There's a lot of interconnected gears that all have to run, and touching one of them can screw all the others if not done well. And again, i'm not calling for the game to be easier. A lot of the difficulty in WoW actually comes from the fact Blizzard after 18 years still doesn't know how to properly use visual indicators that are not the top right corner buffs and debuffs. What does it take to make the Anduin debuff make people glow yellow and purple instead of having DBM that puts a chat bubble on you with a star or purple symbol? Or have that same mechanic circle be not grey on a grey floor? Or in Lords of Dread make the shadows differently colored if they're fake? It's stuff like this that leaves me baffled.

Good read.

[Coldkil]

I'm very glad you took the time to write all of this.

I often attribute difficulty just to the severity of failures and mistakes and how much time is offered to you to process the information and communication before reacting, etc.

It usually means very different things to a lot of people and it's quite hard to put the right words on it, so thanks again for this

That's exactly what i am talking about. There are a lot of aspects regarding difficulty - the ones you mention are certainly important and the most "tangible" ones. many times i see people failing because (for one reason or another) things and mechanics overlap, so other than the mechanic execution they also have to decide on the fly which one to prioritize. Hence, panic

[Aliven]

It's completely irrelevant. Casuals don't deserve any gear no matter how much effort they put in. Fuck em, if they don't want to do premade group content like a normal person they should quit the game.

They do just that, thats why wow is that sorry state it is.

Also, you sounds like wonderfull person to bring into mythic raid.

[Echo of Soul]

They do just that, thats why wow is that sorry state it is.

Also, you sounds like wonderfull person to bring into mythic raid.

I am because I can perform at a high level which is why I deserve gear and those that suck don't. The game would be better off if all the casuals left, they do not deserve gear.

[Coldkil]

I am because I can perform at a high level which is why I deserve gear and those that suck don't. The game would be better off if all the casuals left, they do not deserve gear.

The did for the most part, the game is in shambles, and Blizzard is making a lot of changes because of that. I cannot say you're right or wrong because in the end it depends on how someone plays the game, but apparently Blizzard itself is not happy with how the game has turned out to be lately.

[Nite92]

WoW is an easy game, no matter how anyone tries to rationalize it. And there are people who try mythic raiding who do wipe that many times on bosses because either 1) They're just not very good. 2) They know if you die enough times, you'll eventually get it. To me, the latter is more common and not very fun.

It depends on what you do. If you think getting WF or getting into the HoF are easy, it just shows how little you know about game

[Necromantic]

It depends on what you do. If you think getting WF or getting into the HoF are easy, it just shows how little you know about game

I likely know more about the game than 90% of the people who post here, and judging by so many of the comments I've read, I'm being very generous. So many things I've read people say are "hard" and I think "man, I hope you never play Dark Souls..." There are more bad players than good players in any video game, so there will be players who think things are harder than they really are or are measuring "being hard" by an extremely flawed metric because it's the only metric they can rationalize to support their stance.

Example: Fat Joe cannot jump more than 3" off the ground. Therefore, Fat Joe says jumping is one of life's "hard things to do".