Bored after 2 months of DF

[Alroxas]

Did the devs really try everything to adress their main audiences? Or do they probably still have no idea how to do it?

But there's a big problem with what the devs' believe their target audience to be versus what the community does with it. Case in point, M+ specifically PuGGing M+ - M+ was never intended for PuGs. Sure you can do them in PuGs and that is what the community generally does but the original intent is for organized groups to have a different yet rewarding experience similar to raids but with a higher degree of flexibility.

Are the current issues that plague M+ (see other threads about it) a failure on the Devs when the community isn't following the original intent? And frankly the Devs have pivoted a bit on trying to make M+ more friendly to PuGs. A few examples:

• The change to reward score even on completion of dungeon as long as it's within a reasonable time frame (+40% of timer).
• The removal of keystone depowering (different from depletion down 1 level)
• The rewarding of loot (2 pc) at end of dungeon for non-timed run (slight penalty as 1 item is lower ilv).

- - - Updated - - -

I recall LFR used to be fairly quick and easy runs, but somewhere along the lines it changed and can take much longer, and groups don't breeze through it anymore.

Well there was a time where LFR was "tourist mode" (said by a dev) and it was very trivial but the loot it gave was "lesser" (See HFC LFR with it's faux tier).

The problem is that by removing the loot incentive the queues for LFR became much longer so Blizzard reverted. Granted this was back when tier bonuses were more impactful than the current tier bonuses we have from Vault.

[Zorachus]

Since DF released, I tried LFR maybe half a dozen times, and each run was a disaster. My impression, it seemed 1/3rd of the group were smart players and knew what they were doing, and then another 1/3rd were total newbs with zero clue but at least tried somewhat, and the last 1/3rd practically stood around picking their noses barely moving their characters and AFK.

So I have not stepped foot in LFR since December.

[Thirtyrock]

Since DF released, I tried LFR maybe half a dozen times, and each run was a disaster. My impression, it seemed 1/3rd of the group were smart players and knew what they were doing, and then another 1/3rd were total newbs with zero clue but at least tried somewhat, and the last 1/3rd practically stood around picking their noses barely moving their characters and AFK.

So I have not stepped foot in LFR since December.

I, on the other hand, have had maybe 3 wipes total in LFR. I've run the first 2 wings probably a dozen times, total; I run whenever there's a tank reward OR when I'm super duper bored.

I don't think I've wiped twice in a row in DF.

Haven't run the last wing, because normally LFR has a lot of difficulty with end bosses. The first two wings, though, no problems at all.

[Gorsameth]

I remember that interview, but that just means MORE funds can be allocated to raids because the ROI is improved, rather than the idea that there is NO ROI for raids outside of LFR.

As for the raiding numbers more vs less popular, I've seen a lot of speculation tossed around in this thread, but most of that speculation requires you to make assumptions based on partial information. You can get the numbers to say almost any thing, depending on what you count as raiding.
Is it everyone who steps foot into the raid?
Is it everyone who kills at least one boss on any difficulty?
Everyone who kills at least one boss on Normal or higher?
Everyone who clears Rasz on any difficulty?
Normal or higher?
AOTC and better only?
Guild groups only?
Are we comparing absolute number of raiders or are we looking at percentage of player base (I've seen some people using absolute numbers which is not fair, at ALL, considering the overall decline of subscriptions).
Are we comparing the beginning numbers of the current patch with the END numbers of a previous patch?
Hell, we don't even know for sure how many individual accounts there are with potential players, so we have to make some pretty significant assumptions there as well.

The fact of the matter is, LFR is part of raiding, at least from Blizzard's perspective. We can surmise, then, that all raid formats, taken together, provide enough ROI that Blizzard continues creating them because otherwise they would not continue investing in them or at least would show signs of phasing them out, but we don't see that. Instead, we see them making life easier on raiders, from which I conclude, they believe they can IMPROVE their ROI on raids by making those changes (removing borrowed power, removing infinite grind, removing excess RNG like titanforging/corruption/Random legendaries). Yes, LFR is a big part of what allows that calculation to continue, but it's still raiding.

As for LFR being too difficult - Very specific bosses are potentially too difficult.
I haven't even attempted Broodkeeper or Rasz in LFR, because they require a higher level of coordination than the other bosses and I'm not sure I want to deal with that in an LFR environment, but the other 6 bosses are trivial. This has been the case for the last several expansions, at least in my opinion, where all but one or MAYBE 2 bosses in LFR are appropriately tuned for each raid. End bosses and some iconic bosses like Anduin can sometimes be overtuned or just too complex for the average LFR, at least until later in the tier.

I do want to say, I appreciate your response. I appreciate you taking the time to find that, I had forgotten that quote. I appreciate your politeness, especially given some of the acrimony in this thread.

Broodkeeper is easy so long as you get even 1-2 players who know what they are doing and destroy eggs. Aside from that its just a pure tank/spank fight with almost no mechanics.
Rasz is a different story and during the first few weeks having several (2-5) wipes before people learning how to handle the knockbacks was normal. Haven't been there since the 3e week it was open so don't know how bad it is currently.

[Soon-TM]

because nobody takes it seriously

I guess that it just cannot be taken seriously in the current state of things.

[Thirtyrock]

Broodkeeper is easy so long as you get even 1-2 players who know what they are doing and destroy eggs. Aside from that its just a pure tank/spank fight with almost no mechanics.
Rasz is a different story and during the first few weeks having several (2-5) wipes before people learning how to handle the knockbacks was normal. Haven't been there since the 3e week it was open so don't know how bad it is currently.

Fair enough! I haven't tried either, because I wasn't sure how much they nerfed Broodkeeper. It takes a fair bit of coordination in Heroic and if it required even 1/2 that coordination...shit show city.

[HansOlo]

No game should be your focus for months upon months is another strong thought of mine. That is why i enjoy the catch up mechanisms in WoW since it means i can come back later and be no worse then someone who has kept playing month upon month which again is why i swap specs every single patch. Another thing is that i find FF14 more approachable in a more organic manner then WoW as there is no real grandfathered in class of players who are nasty to others ( which WoW should copy its handling of toxicity instead of the more libertarian way they have been ).

I myself do not watch streamers at all and outside of following for the flavor of that patch / month for the next season mmo-champ is my only interaction in the wow general community. Also if streamers were the contributers to WoW how come it has not hit its pre-streaming monolithic state? with raids being harder and the game in general being harder how come it has not picked up even more subs? I am also a man of the people so the median is whom you serve not the margins either really bad or really good either. MMOs should encourage long breaks without a tethering of time this is not 2008 mate.

During the world first raids - those channels are the most watched. It comes back to the community(including newsfeed and topics).

You are just speakng from hypothetical standpoint. How do you solve it, without the entire playerbase turning thier back on you? Even removal of AP grind makes people confused(just look in the thread).

If no game you should be like that, how come it's been around for 18years? WoW did still better than FF, if not for the bandwagon people. The stockmarket also proves it.

I already asked you to be more critical - otherwise, we stop here.

[Cynical Asshole]

This is probably pathetic but in lack of anything else to do, I started building my garrison back in WoD as well as doing the Balance of Power artifact quest in Legion content.

[Truthseeker11]

I think the only way people wont get bored of the game, is to make "older content" SOLO friendly and challenging...
If you want to complete older quests and expansions, it should not be one hit one kill.. And older raids..
And even have a "Torghast" style of difficulty on raids, with better rewards for solo...
No matter how many people say its a MMO, most play it SOLO.. so when there is little to do, people get bored. Especially farming the same things week in week out

[jeezusisacasual]

During the world first raids - those channels are the most watched. It comes back to the community(including newsfeed and topics).

You are just speakng from hypothetical standpoint. How do you solve it, without the entire playerbase turning thier back on you? Even removal of AP grind makes people confused(just look in the thread).

If no game you should be like that, how come it's been around for 18years? WoW did still better than FF, if not for the bandwagon people. The stockmarket also proves it.

I already asked you to be more critical - otherwise, we stop here.

I only speak for myself and my own personal needs and i am glad it gets the views it does during that period but what about when those twice a year at best events dont happen? How can you build a very active community without it. I would also think that FF14 is easier due to the ease of seeing the various mechanics since they are brightly colored elements on the field.

But no singular thing will fix the overall problem and i have been critical but its based on the overall community and unless blizzard goes heavy handed with moderation it will likely be impossible without making the game easy enough to remove those toxic people from the game completely.

[noctim2]

Oddly enough, I like Dragonflight better than Shadowlands. While SL was designed to constantly annoy you, Dragonflight feels more like a sandbox.

But I agree that once you've seen the content via LFR and realize that +7 mythics give better loot, it tends to come off pretty repetitive.

My raid is paused right now because we cleared the heroic vault of incarnates, so I have plenty of time to level up some alts.

The only things that bother me are the severely gated professions (although I really like the new approach) and the imbalance of classes.

Also I think heroic difficulty for raids is a little bit overtuned since shadowlands. The gap between the last boss and the other ones is quite big. Lost some casual progress raiders from our guild over encounters like raza and also jailer/sylvanas/denathrius etc.

[Alroxas]

in the old days, you could run into people on the same server out in the world organically and youd see familiar faces and that would naturally build up social play. now everyone gets sharded and phased off into a thousand different versions that you run into someone once in the game world, you never see them again. theres no social in that sort of play. they might as well be anonymous bots.

the entire experience feels like such a downgrade.

You realize the point of sharding/phasing tech is to make servers seem more populated when they aren't? There's only really a handful of servers that are "high pop", the rest are middle to low pop. And while server connections/merges are a good idea, they aren't easy to do (otherwise we'd see more of them). The whole point is to make the world seem fuller.

Unless it's too full so then it creates a new shard/phase to put players in. The problem is the size definition of a zone can be troublesome. Take any zone, and put 100 players in it. Because of clustering of players, sometimes a zone might feel "empty" but is actually full with most of the players over in a different area of the same zone. You just can't tell because you aren't over there.

Now what IS lost now is server identity. Which leads into one of the reasons why we have issues with PuG but that is for another thread.

[Thirtyrock]

You realize the point of sharding/phasing tech is to make servers seem more populated when they aren't? There's only really a handful of servers that are "high pop", the rest are middle to low pop. And while server connections/merges are a good idea, they aren't easy to do (otherwise we'd see more of them). The whole point is to make the world seem fuller.

Unless it's too full so then it creates a new shard/phase to put players in. The problem is the size definition of a zone can be troublesome. Take any zone, and put 100 players in it. Because of clustering of players, sometimes a zone might feel "empty" but is actually full with most of the players over in a different area of the same zone. You just can't tell because you aren't over there.

Now what IS lost now is server identity. Which leads into one of the reasons why we have issues with PuG but that is for another thread.

I think the problem with Kokolums thesis is this: While an increased sense of community could be good for the game, it doesn't address the issues of content addressed in this thread. I was in a great guild of my old guildmates, people I'd played with from Wrath through MoP, at the beginning of Shadowlands. The guild fell apart after we got AOTC in Castle Nathria. Why? Because we were all primarily interested in raiding and the game design pushed us into A FEELING (I know it's a feeling and we technically could have downed the content without giving in, but that's not the point) of infinite grind. We all quit. The DF design brought us back. Unfortunately, a lot of people in this thread miss that infinite grind, because it gave them something to do on a daily basis that felt meaningful.

Nothing that Kokolums offers as a solution addresses that dichotomy/imbalance between content preferences.

Players have evolved and now want to play differently than in Vanilla. We want to be able to play at our own pace and that often means we don't have the patience required to show someone the ropes, especially if they're a stranger. If I queue up for a normal/heroic dungeon, I want to run the dungeon efficiently. I'm not opposed to giving pointers after a wipe or near wipe, but I'm not going to teach someone how to play their class in a random dungeon. If I queue up for a key, I want to time the key.

Now, I DON'T view GUILD groups the same way. I'm completely happy with teaching someone a dungeon or helping them with their class/rotation, assuming I'm familiar with it, and spend a lot of time with them BECAUSE I KNOW THEM. I'm personally willing to do this.

I anticipate that Kokolums would suggest that smaller servers, etc., would promote this sort of behavior, and they truly might incentivize me to do more of it, but that's because I'm already a fairly social player. Players who don't WANT to be social will either ignore the incentives or feel FORCED into those behaviors and types of groups despite their preferences. These players will most likely quit, because they didn't sign up for that type of gameplay in the first place. This is a situation where the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze, since you either overtune the rewards and players quit, or you spend a lot of effort designing helper/social systems that the majority of the player base ignore.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you could offer relatively minor incentives, like transmog, open-world and leveling buffs, helper-io scores, and the like and players would gradually opt in, because they find they enjoy the game more by being more social, but I doubt it. I think players who want that kind of social interaction can get it by joining active guilds that support that type of thing and players who DON'T want it opt out/only join guilds for the reduced hearthstone cooldown.

[james2400]

Its a M+ lobby game now nothing else matters outside of it.

[arkanon]

During the world first raids - those channels are the most watched. It comes back to the community(including newsfeed and topics).

You are just speakng from hypothetical standpoint. How do you solve it, without the entire playerbase turning thier back on you? Even removal of AP grind makes people confused(just look in the thread).

If no game you should be like that, how come it's been around for 18years? WoW did still better than FF, if not for the bandwagon people. The stockmarket also proves it.

I already asked you to be more critical - otherwise, we stop here.

The stock market proves WHAT exactly?

[Kokolums]

I think the problem with Kokolums thesis is this: While an increased sense of community could be good for the game, it doesn't address the issues of content addressed in this thread. I was in a great guild of my old guildmates, people I'd played with from Wrath through MoP, at the beginning of Shadowlands. The guild fell apart after we got AOTC in Castle Nathria. Why? Because we were all primarily interested in raiding and the game design pushed us into A FEELING (I know it's a feeling and we technically could have downed the content without giving in, but that's not the point) of infinite grind. We all quit. The DF design brought us back. Unfortunately, a lot of people in this thread miss that infinite grind, because it gave them something to do on a daily basis that felt meaningful.

Nothing that Kokolums offers as a solution addresses that dichotomy/imbalance between content preferences.

Players have evolved and now want to play differently than in Vanilla. We want to be able to play at our own pace and that often means we don't have the patience required to show someone the ropes, especially if they're a stranger. If I queue up for a normal/heroic dungeon, I want to run the dungeon efficiently. I'm not opposed to giving pointers after a wipe or near wipe, but I'm not going to teach someone how to play their class in a random dungeon. If I queue up for a key, I want to time the key.

Now, I DON'T view GUILD groups the same way. I'm completely happy with teaching someone a dungeon or helping them with their class/rotation, assuming I'm familiar with it, and spend a lot of time with them BECAUSE I KNOW THEM. I'm personally willing to do this.

I anticipate that Kokolums would suggest that smaller servers, etc., would promote this sort of behavior, and they truly might incentivize me to do more of it, but that's because I'm already a fairly social player. Players who don't WANT to be social will either ignore the incentives or feel FORCED into those behaviors and types of groups despite their preferences. These players will most likely quit, because they didn't sign up for that type of gameplay in the first place. This is a situation where the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze, since you either overtune the rewards and players quit, or you spend a lot of effort designing helper/social systems that the majority of the player base ignore.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you could offer relatively minor incentives, like transmog, open-world and leveling buffs, helper-io scores, and the like and players would gradually opt in, because they find they enjoy the game more by being more social, but I doubt it. I think players who want that kind of social interaction can get it by joining active guilds that support that type of thing and players who DON'T want it opt out/only join guilds for the reduced hearthstone cooldown.

1. players DONT evolve. they all want the same thing across every era. They mostly want social.
2. blizz detroyed social and the community in wrath.
3. wow dropped from 12 million down to a piddly 2-3 million.
4. the fundamental systems have started breaking down as they now need to do cross realm to fill raids and m+
5. they still refuse to fix social.

everything else is nonsense. DF brought NOBODY back. its still down to that piddly 2-3 million, just BARELY enough to keep the systems going. barely. its just gonna take one more hit to topple this thing. they cant do cross realm again. thats a one time fix.

its gonna be like how d3 died. a game filled with 5 deniers screaming the game is great.

[Glorious Leader]

Its a M+ lobby game now nothing else matters outside of it.

They should really just change the model now. One sub for all instanced content. Just make raids and dungeons. Log on search for groups or host your own.

[Kokolums]

They should really just change the model now. One sub for all instanced content. Just make raids and dungeons. Log on search for groups or host your own.

I used to joke many years ago that they should just create a cross-faction city hub with portals to raids and dungeons. Remove the entire game world. They don't care about the rest of it. But they've refused to fix it for so long that I imagine what few players remain would be OK with it.

But WoW has so much potential. With proper social and versions, WoW should crack 20 million subs in todays world. Its criminal how they let it rot. The core of WoW is amazing. Combat is so smooth and responsive. Its bright and fun in parts and grim in others. Its a shining star. But its their game. They do not care.

[HansOlo]

The stock market proves WHAT exactly?

My bad - the Square Enix stock is actually doing very good. It didn't last year I checked.

- - - Updated - - -

1. players DONT evolve. they all want the same thing across every era. They mostly want social.
2. blizz detroyed social and the community in wrath.
3. wow dropped from 12 million down to a piddly 2-3 million.
4. the fundamental systems have started breaking down as they now need to do cross realm to fill raids and m+
5. they still refuse to fix social.

everything else is nonsense. DF brought NOBODY back. its still down to that piddly 2-3 million, just BARELY enough to keep the systems going. barely. its just gonna take one more hit to topple this thing. they cant do cross realm again. thats a one time fix.

its gonna be like how d3 died. a game filled with 5 deniers screaming the game is great.

I used to joke many years ago that they should just create a cross-faction city hub with portals to raids and dungeons. Remove the entire game world. They don't care about the rest of it. But they've refused to fix it for so long that I imagine what few players remain would be OK with it.

But WoW has so much potential. With proper social and versions, WoW should crack 20 million subs in todays world. Its criminal how they let it rot. The core of WoW is amazing. Combat is so smooth and responsive. Its bright and fun in parts and grim in others. Its a shining star. But its their game. They do not care.

Why do they need anyone - they can just ask you. 8K Blizzard empolyee, 60B worth, 18 years of business case. They know nothing - but some dude at MMO-C is promising 20M people.

[arkanon]

My bad - the Square Enix stock is actually doing very good. It didn't last year I checked.

You didn't answer my question, why not? Have another go and think about what's being asked.