"not fun game environment" blizzard creates and does not fix what they cause

[Glorious Leader]

Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything that's not "rated". Like...you cannot possibly imagine how little of a shit Blizzard gives on all content that's not M+, rated PVP and heroic+mythic raiding.

dont hire elitist jerks to make the game

[Zodiark]

The problem is that you're presupposing here that twinks are "unhealthy", and that you're discounting the fun that twink players have. Why does THAT fun not matter, or matter less? They're the ones spending the most time in that content - everyone else barely touches it. Why shouldn't their fun be prioritized there, even at the expense of the fun of people who barely ever interact with that content? What is wrong with that? You're assuming implicitly that if that kind of sporadic, niche content was perfectly balanced, everyone would have more fun - but I don't think that's true. All the twinks would have less fun, not more. You are equivocating maximum balance and maximum fun, and/or "a healthy game". I don't think that's always the case. Unbalanced content can also be fun, precisely because it is unbalanced; it's just not the same kind of fun for everyone, but that's okay if and as long as everyone also doesn't participate in that content equally. Which is precisely why this is fine for niche content like low-level BGs, but of course would not be fine for main-line content like M+ or whatever.

I understand that people enjoy twinking. I did too once upon a time. Even still I do it in single player games but I always curb myself because I know that the fastest way to make me loose interest in a game is by over-trivializing it. I feel like most people who engage in this type of thing come to that conclusion themselves after a while. When it comes to online games like WoW I feel like after a game looses it's challenge players start making up their own challenges like how much can they push the envelope and squeeze that much more out of their toons. I did this during Remix. Sure it was fun for a hot minute but then it got boring. After I got like 10 toons maxed out with one of them being fully capped and able to one shot most things it was boring so I stopped a few weeks before remix ended and only logged in after to spend all my currency.
These types of practices are fun for a finite amount of time. Twinks should be allowed to have some fun too but the problem is that they are doing so by ganking non-twinks. This is almost like bullying. So what happens? The players who are getting pwned by the twinks either quit, do other content, or become twinks themselves. Thus further perpetuating the problem. This is why I don't feel like it's a practice that's healthy for the game overall.

The slippery slope argument is almost always fallacious, because it makes predictions and assumptions that are usually not unequivocal or outright untrue. That being said, the slippery slope at least has SOME validity in extremely large systems where resource allocation is fairly trivial and not a strict zero-sum game. It is very different in a small system confined by resource allocation, because there you have to prioritize. That's why in, say, society at large we can afford to worry about small things without compromising larger things - fixing potholes, say, won't exactly impact our ability to, say, help fight world hunger or something. The system is too large for these things to cause resource allocation issues. But WoW does not work like that. Dev time is limited. Even small things take a lot of hours. Trying to balance all low-level content is not some thing you can just do on the side and for free - it takes away real and substantial resources that you now can't use elsewhere. Because WoW is such a complex machine of interacting parts, it is extremely difficult (and therefore resource-intensive) to balance all the things that interact with each other against all different forms of content. You might fix balance in low-level PvP, say, but then suddenly PvE leveling is unbalanced. You fix solo PvE leveling, and all of a sudden dungeon performance is all over the place. And so on. It would take absolutely ABSURD amounts of work to balance all that, and that for content that most players spend almost no time on because they move on so quickly from things like leveling. It would be inefficient and take substantial resources away from things that players actually spend most of their time on.

You are trying to make some kind of abstract point, without thinking about the actual implementation and the concrete situations at play. That's the problem with slippery-slope arguments: they play on an abstract truism and appeal to general principle, but in terms of concrete implementation they are almost always nonsensical and unusably inefficient. Identify concrete problems - find concrete solutions - weigh up efficiency. That's the way to go about it.

I feel like allowing twinks to continue to have free reign leads to bleed over into other areas of the game. Slippery slope or whatever you want to call it aside. I feel like if they JUST tweaked the scaling it wouldn't take so much resources and labor. Just make it so power levels are absolutely capped regardless of item level or rarity or anything else. If there is a reason this can't be done I'd love to know what it is.

You say you aren't too aware of the scaling of Timewalking right now. You al mentioned you remember some dungeons you could solo and others would one shot you. let me assure you that if you are NOT a twink and NOT in the proper level range, 10-11,40-41, so on that you will absolutely get sliced and diced by even basic mobs. You might have SOME minor mitigation against these by having level appropriate gear/ilevel but at the end of the day unless you are twinked out it won't matter lasting a few seconds longer or not you still will die rather fast. However in NORMAL non-scaled dungeons outside of TW this isn't the case at all. If your in a normal dungeon run and the tank goes afk you can realistically fight and kill a small pack. In TW though you have little chance unless you are a tank yourself or healer and can pull some major tricks out of your ass. Even then it's a crap shoot. I know this because I have played every class in TW since the anniversary event. I healed, tanked, and dps'd in all of the TW dungeons at all levels. When I was the right power bracket say 70-71 I felt like a god. When I was 76 I felt like I was afraid for my life.

That's another red herring. Leveling content or trivial dungeons do not and have never taught people how to play their class. You learn either by direct information, or by being forced to do things right; and that only happens in content challenging enough to require it. TW was never that, is not intended to be that, and shouldn't ever be that. And the same goes for things like leveling. That's not fun, it's not conducive to the new-player experience, and it's not helpful for seasonal events made to relax the usual routine. Could/should WoW do more to help people get better? Sure. But you don't do that by making fun and trivial content more difficult. You do it by giving better feedback and establishing learning mechanisms in the type of content that actually demands performance - I've advocated for e.g. a system that gives you a splash warning if you mess up a mechanic in M+, or if you miss something you should have handled like a kick or a fight-specific mechanic. That would actually TEACH people - making TW harder and less twink-able would do nothing but make that kind of content less fun for a lot of people.

That's not to say there aren't SOME balance issues with TW to iron out, I'm sure. I don't know the current situation, but TW used to be all over the place. Some dungeons you could solo, others would oneshot you with bullshit mechanics. That's not great, but the same principle as outlined above applies: this content is too transient and too sporadic to warrant heavily investing resources into. That sucks, but such is the way of things. I'd rather they spend more time balancing raids, M+, and so on than trying to get TW just right. And that is, unfortunately, the choice they're faced with a lot of the time. They can probably find SOME resources to put behind this, and it'd be nice if TW was a bit better - but we should not expect significant balance efforts. That kind of content is just not worth it.

It's not as simplistic as that, but absolutely there are forms of content where lulz anything goes, and forms of content where performance matters. That is horizontal segmentation at work, and that's a GOOD thing. Because people want different things out of the game, and some people want to work on getting better while some other people just want to do whatever and chill. It becomes complicated primarily when other people are involved (because you have to respect each other's time), but at the principal level, having these different ways to play is a very good thing indeed.

If a mode is so easy it's no longer enjoyable then what is even the point of the mode in the first place? I have a few low level toons that tool around in the lower areas older zones, etc. Most times those are toons I never do anything with because after a bit of playing I get so bored I log off and forget about them. I have the idea that they will be fun to mess around with in the older areas but then there is nothing to actually do because for one no one is there. For two the mobs are a joke.

So once again. Either MAKE the leveling experience something enjoyable or make it totally optional for anyone who has a max level toon. Right now I have the full 65 toons. I have like 40 lvl 80's. I WISH to God that leveling could show me a bit more fun and dynamic enjoyment or that I could see things I haven't in a new way.

[Biomega]

I understand that people enjoy twinking. I did too once upon a time. Even still I do it in single player games but I always curb myself because I know that the fastest way to make me loose interest in a game is by over-trivializing it. I feel like most people who engage in this type of thing come to that conclusion themselves after a while.

How about you let those people decide what's fun for them, and for how long. You lost interest in X amount of time - doesn't mean other players will. You seem to be doing a lot of "well this was MY experience, so let's go off of that" here and that's just kind of a problem, honestly. The whole point of this kind of niche content is that these players do NOT share the common experience. That's... why it's niche content.

You keep implicitly framing things as saving those players from themselves, but all your justifications keep going back to YOUR experience. That's deeply problematic.

Twinks should be allowed to have some fun too but the problem is that they are doing so by ganking non-twinks. This is almost like bullying. So what happens? The players who are getting pwned by the twinks either quit, do other content, or become twinks themselves. Thus further perpetuating the problem. This is why I don't feel like it's a practice that's healthy for the game overall.

But as I keep explaining, this type of content is NICHE content. It is NOT "the game overall". That's the point. That's the entire reason it's okay. If this actually was "the game overall" it would NOT be okay. But it isn't.

And part of the reason those twinks are having as much fun as they are (though not all of it, mind you) is because it allows them to be OP vs. non-twinks. That's what's attractive about it, at least in part. You take that away you don't just balance - you erase. And for what gain? Slightly lowering the annoyance of players who come visit this content twice in the lifetime of their character? Doesn't sound like a great trade-off.

You keep portraying this like it was some kind of pervasive problem, but don't lose sight of the fact that we're talking about niche-of-a-niche content here. Content a huge number of players probably never experience at all. This doesn't need fixing because it not being balanced is what makes it fun for the people who choose to engage in this kind of content way disproportionately.

And the slippery slope doesn't fly. "Fixing" low-level BGs won't magically lead to them fixing problems in max-level content, say. In fact, if anything it's the opposite, because you've taken up resources to fix niche content most people either never see or see for an hour or two and then never revisit. That's terrible resource management that leads to fewer things of widespread relevance getting fixed.

If a mode is so easy it's no longer enjoyable then what is even the point of the mode in the first place?

I don't know, why are you bringing this up now? Who was talking about it not being enjoyable anymore? I specifically said there's people who DO enjoy mindlessly easy stuff. Why is your response to that "yeah but WHAT IF THEY DON'T, THOUGH?!", that really confuses me.

The whole point of horizontal segmentation is that you have options to choose from. No longer find easy content interesting? Cool! There's harder content to move on to. Still find it interesting? Great! Keep doing it. Doesn't seem like a terribly complicated concept to me, I don't know.

So once again. Either MAKE the leveling experience something enjoyable or make it totally optional for anyone who has a max level toon. Right now I have the full 65 toons. I have like 40 lvl 80's. I WISH to God that leveling could show me a bit more fun and dynamic enjoyment or that I could see things I haven't in a new way.

I agree. They SHOULD make the leveling experience more optional for max-level players. Outside of real-money payments, that is. Some kind of earnable boost token, or something.

I've been saying for years I think leveling in many modern online RPGs is actually an outmoded concept that should be replaced by a different kind of progression system. But it's persistent, and people cling to their single-player RPG fantasies despite ample evidence that so, so many people just do not care and would rather skip the leveling. Whenever they try to slow things down, people get angry. And yet they'll die on the hill of "RPG=leveling" for some reason, as if there was no other way to implement both mechanical and narrative progression.

Leveling has very little actual use value as such, and is mostly a historic relic. But that's a topic for another thread altogether, let's not derail things unduly.

[Caprias]

Can't you just be a normal gamer and leave WoW pvp for League of Legends like 90% of the pvp community did since cataclysm?

I am only half joking, this games pvp integrity and development resources have been on the down low for a long time, it's just not a priority in the first place and for sure as hell not in super niche things like low level bg brackets (which arguably have been a unbalanced mess for decades anyways).

[Zodiark]

I agree. They SHOULD make the leveling experience more optional for max-level players. Outside of real-money payments, that is. Some kind of earnable boost token, or something.

I've been saying for years I think leveling in many modern online RPGs is actually an outmoded concept that should be replaced by a different kind of progression system. But it's persistent, and people cling to their single-player RPG fantasies despite ample evidence that so, so many people just do not care and would rather skip the leveling. Whenever they try to slow things down, people get angry. And yet they'll die on the hill of "RPG=leveling" for some reason, as if there was no other way to implement both mechanical and narrative progression.

Leveling has very little actual use value as such, and is mostly a historic relic. But that's a topic for another thread altogether, let's not derail things unduly.

First off to your early points, me sharing MY opinion of how things should be regarding content that's fun or whatever is fine. Nothing problematic. People are allowed to share their opinions. Things have to be a certain way in games and in life. Not everything is a democracy. Of course I don't get to say one way or the other what is fun or not or what should be allowed or not. I was merely coming from a place where IF I was able to control XYZ then this is how I would personally do it. I've basically been playing video games for 35 years and 25 of those has been mmorpgs. I personally feel like I have thoughts to share. Weather someone places value in them or not is up to the person.

Growing up and experiencing things is a lot of trial and error and personal choice. That's the whole thing with free will. Gotta see it for themselves basically. That's where I think a lot of the whole Twinking thing comes from. Initially it feels good to actually be strong, unstoppable. But then for me at least it got boring. I feel like maybe others feel the same maybe they don't. IDK. But like I said, content that promotes taking advantage of other gamers doesn't feel good to me. It's super Niche content YES. But maybe it wouldn't be so niche if people were more inclined to actually do leveling BG's in the first place.

This game and it's different modes of play, BG's, Dungeons, Raiding, etc don't exist in a vacuum. Different areas absolutely can and have effected the other(s) in some way or another. Who's to say that if twinking was curbed in one area it wouldn't have an effect on the others?

I'm glad at least you agree with me on the leveling/skip changes. I feel like leveling SHOLD be fun and enjoyable and there should be fun experiences along the way if you want them but if you just want to skip it then that should be a thing too. Although in some ways I sort of respect Blizzard to sticking to their guns. One of the cool things about old Blizzard was that it was the company who released content/games when they were ready. I wish they would stick to their guns about more stuff. Also work to address other areas of problems in the game NOT just focus on end game/new content all the time. Most of this whole thread could be boiled down to not having enough direct interaction by Blizzard with regards to older content like BG's and such. That's why the OP started this thread in the first place because they felt like leveling BG's aren't fun because it's basically a forgotten mode where twinks and such are allowed to run amok and if your not one of them your not having fun.

People do bonehead stuff and should be allowed to make mistakes but hell I've seen in real life people do some REALLY dumb stuff. I mean personally I feel like most people in the Real world need shock collars. Try to do something really dumb and get a zap. Like a dude gets cut off and at the next light gets out and smashes someone's windshield in. That kind of thing. However this wouldn't work because people would just game the system in real life and find ways to circumvent the shock somehow. So yeah it's just frustrating when people do things at others expense in game or otherwise.

[Biomega]

First off to your early points, me sharing MY opinion of how things should be regarding content that's fun or whatever is fine. Nothing problematic. People are allowed to share their opinions.

That's not the point. My problem isn't you going "I think this is what they should do". My problem is you going "I don't like this, therefore everyone else must also not be liking this". Having your own personal opinions is fine; only seeing an issue from your own personal perspective, however, is problematic.

That's not to say you can't hold that position - you can express whatever position you want. But you're airing it in a public forum, which means it's subject to comment and critique. Don't like that, don't post it.

I was merely coming from a place where IF I was able to control XYZ then this is how I would personally do it.

That's also not a problem as such. The problem comes from why you'd do it like this - and the reason you've mostly given is "I don't like this, therefore everyone else must also not be liking this". And that's not inherent in the hypothetical of "if I could change it". You can very easily suggest such changes that take into account perspectives other than your own, and it wouldn't be problematic. It only becomes problematic when you suggest changing a game for millions of players purely based on your own preference; doubly so if you then defend it by going "I'm just protecting them from themselves, you see!" without any kind of real substantiation beyond you liking it that way.

Growing up and experiencing things is a lot of trial and error and personal choice. That's the whole thing with free will. Gotta see it for themselves basically. That's where I think a lot of the whole Twinking thing comes from. Initially it feels good to actually be strong, unstoppable. But then for me at least it got boring. I feel like maybe others feel the same maybe they don't.

Exactly. Maybe they don't. Consider that for a bit. Then a bit more.

Niche content will always exist, by definition. It's completely unrealistic to expect every form of content to be mainstream. WoW has too much and too variegated a selection of content for that to ever happen. Niches create themselves through systemic setup and subsequent participation rates. And the more niche something is, the more okay it is for that niche to cater to the people who most engage with it. Imbalances and skews become more and more acceptable the more imbalanced and skewed the player base is. Note that it's not required for niche content to be imbalanced; merely that sometimes, imbalance in niche content can maximize fun better than balance can, because the player base in question is itself already imbalanced. The more balanced the player base is, the less desirable imbalance tends to be and the more desirable balances tends to become - which is why in super mainstream content like raids, M+, etc. balance tends, on the whole, to be the most desirable state (though even there we find some exceptions based on segmentation, but that's more complicated).

Also work to address other areas of problems in the game NOT just focus on end game/new content all the time.

There's a good reason they do this, though. It's the most mainstream content, i.e. the content most players engage with in a serious way. If you have limited resources, isn't it a smart thing to be allocating those resources based on where they have the most positive impact for the most people? How do you think people would feel if you went "sorry, there's only 3 raid tiers this expansion and not 4, we really had to fix BG leveling for players level 10-19, balance was all over the place!" or something of that sort? Do you think that's a good way to manage the game?

I agree in the abstract, of course, that it would be nice if they could give every part of the game all the attention those parts need. But that's not feasible or practical. It's not an economic reality. It has nothing to do with corporate greed or whatever - it's a fundamental problem of limited resources. There's some wriggle-room, of course - they DO change niche things and take care of things other than mainstream content. But it's always to a lesser degree and with fewer resources, because that MAKES SENSE.

Most of this whole thread could be boiled down to not having enough direct interaction by Blizzard with regards to older content like BG's and such. That's why the OP started this thread in the first place because they felt like leveling BG's aren't fun because it's basically a forgotten mode where twinks and such are allowed to run amok and if your not one of them your not having fun.

Putting aside the issue that you still don't seem to agree that those players having fun at other players' expense may not in fact be a bad thing, the problem isn't that Blizzard isn't aware of this. It's that they don't want to spend resources to "fix" a problem like this. For one, because it may not be a problem (see above), but also because it's so niche that it's not worth spending development resources on that you could spend on something else that's broken and affects a WHOLE LOT more players.

You're basically complaining the city didn't send someone to fix the pothole in front of your house, when the city says sorry we need those people to fix the main road. And it would make no sense to pull people off fixing the main road just to fix one pothole in your local area. That'd just be bad management. And you pointing out that indeed that pothole IS a problem and fixing it WOULD improve things isn't helping, because that's not the point of contention. The point of contention is other things are more important.

[Zodiark]

Putting aside the issue that you still don't seem to agree that those players having fun at other players' expense may not in fact be a bad thing, the problem isn't that Blizzard isn't aware of this. It's that they don't want to spend resources to "fix" a problem like this. For one, because it may not be a problem (see above), but also because it's so niche that it's not worth spending development resources on that you could spend on something else that's broken and affects a WHOLE LOT more players.

You're basically complaining the city didn't send someone to fix the pothole in front of your house, when the city says sorry we need those people to fix the main road. And it would make no sense to pull people off fixing the main road just to fix one pothole in your local area. That'd just be bad management. And you pointing out that indeed that pothole IS a problem and fixing it WOULD improve things isn't helping, because that's not the point of contention. The point of contention is other things are more important.

To your last point and to other points you made. You mentioned limited resources. I understand that a company needs to be financially equitable for its employees and profitable when developing a game. Therefore you can't just add unlimited resources to your team even if your a close to 100 billion dollar company. The money allocated to WoW alone is fixed I'm sure but there has to be SOME wiggle room. Having a smaller team to address other areas of the game with older content surely can't be that taxing on WoW's fiscal health report. I understand that the argument for years with WoW has been "spaghetti code", being one of the main reasons why certain changes can't be so easily implemented. I feel like in this day and age there surely is a solution to this.

There has been talk for a while now about a world revamp possibly on the horizon. Maybe during some of that development they can work out the kinks in the scaling content balancing which would also address the twink issue. When another player in my opinion has it's fun at another's expense then to me that player's wishes then become forfeit. If that's problematic oh well I have zero issue being problematic then. TO me to say otherwise is like condoning bullying of any form.

Also the pothole analogy, I never said this is an issue that HAS to be solved right NOW. Even in my town there are potholes. If I say something then I don't expect it to be fixed tomorrow. However in real life if something isn't addressed then people can and DO use legal means like lawsuits to seek financial remediation. In the game your kind of boned. I've heard stories of players who complained about something to a GM and got blown off after they submitted too many tickets or what not. How true those stories are IDK but I'm sure many people's grievances never get fully addressed and that's basically that.

[Biomega]

The money allocated to WoW alone is fixed I'm sure but there has to be SOME wiggle room.

There is. I've already mentioned this. Using the exact same phrase "wriggle-room", I believe, and in the very post you're quoting. They DO fix small things. But that, too, has an order of priority. And since, as I explained, you can well make the argument that this particular issue doesn't even necessarily need "fixing", it's just not a priority even within those small things.

WoW has a million things that could do with improvement. Even small things. They can't get to everything all the time. It can take years even to fix trivial things, simply because there's so much in a game as large and as old as this. And even if this issue at hand here was an actual problem (and again, I make a case that it is not), it's by no means something small. It's hugely interconnected with all sorts of other content, and there's a lot of work you need to do to make sure things don't get even wonkier as a result of your "fix". Like, you could, for example, fix twink scaling for BGs and then end up with fucked-up scaling for PvE leveling, where suddenly gear stops mattering or skills do 1 damage or a million or whatever. WoW is a giant, convoluted mass of twenty years of under-the-hood tinkering. It's not as easy as just sitting three devs down for a week to iron things out. That's not how it works, unfortunately. We've seen this with e.g. the periodic number pruning they do, where scaling is changed and inevitably leads to some things going WILDLY out of whack. It's happened every single time they've done it, it'll probably happen every single time they'll do it in the future. That's just how a project like this tends to play out.

None of the problems laid out in this particular context are anywhere near relevant or important enough to warrant the substantial resource investment it would take to balance things - and then, as I keep repeating, you may well end up in a place where things are LESS fun rather than more just because you "fixed" the situation for casual levelers that do two 10-19 BGs in their lifetime, but ruined the experience for all the twink players who played those BGs two hours a day for a decade. Is that a trade-off you think is worth making just so you can sit there and go "perfectly balanced, as all things should be"?

There has been talk for a while now about a world revamp possibly on the horizon.

There's been talk of this for years, and for years I've been explaining to people how unlikely this is to happen because of how expensive it is vs. how much of an actual effect it'll have on players. It'd be NICE, to be sure, don't get me wrong - but it's almost impossible to also make it WORTH THE COST. Unless something dramatic changes, and that's possible - AI, for example, could potentially make the work more cost-efficient to the point where it may be worth doing. Or the age of the game might progress so much where a radical remodeling may pay off because it could potentially get some players back in. It's hard to tell without access to the actual numbers.

Also the pothole analogy, I never said this is an issue that HAS to be solved right NOW. Even in my town there are potholes. If I say something then I don't expect it to be fixed tomorrow. However in real life if something isn't addressed then people can and DO use legal means like lawsuits to seek financial remediation. In the game your kind of boned.

No, you're not. QUIT. Tell them it's because low-level BG balance isn't being addressed. Enough people do that, I promise you they'll be on it like stink on cheese.

Enough people don't do that, well, then that tells you how important of a problem this actually is, doesn't it.

[Ghost of Cow]

Thread: "Blizzard only pays attention to the niche of players at the top end of the game! They should cater to everyone!"

Also Thread: "The biggest issue in the entire game is twinks killing me in low level BG brackets that you can level out of in an hour!"

[Ereb]

Thread: "Blizzard only pays attention to the niche of players at the top end of the game! They should cater to everyone!"

Also Thread: "The biggest issue in the entire game is twinks killing me in low level BG brackets that you can level out of in an hour!"

I'll take "made up problems in MMO-C" for $400 Alex!