And not gaslighting is not gaslighting. Ad hominem though (what you continue to do) remains pathetic.
The only problem is the conclusion you're drawing from those parallels. I won't call you disingenuous though, I can quite clearly see it's just beyond you.
They don't keep making the same mistakes though. Sure, I get that in your mind it's all the same, but some of us can see the obvious differences. In other cases I am not even convinced they are mistakes. And the evidence you keep harping on about (that they "fixed the issue" a year later) is something I've already addressed.
And if you're going to quote what Ion said, don't fucking cherry pick. That is disingenuous. Here is a link with a transcript of the answers. If you read more than one or two sentences, it's pretty much exactly what I have been saying here.
Yes he acknowledges that they don't get everything and in some cases should have reacted sooner to feedback. But that is with the benefit of hindsight.
Also he takes an entire paragraph explaining, exactly as I said, that they take all sorts of feedback into account and try to balance the needs of the diverse playerbase. For example with the conduit issue, he even says that he expected that for min-maxers and high end raiders, certain aspects of the design would not be well appreciated. But he said that they kept it that way for the benefit of the rest of the playerbase.
Sorry Kralljin, but your narrative is horribly flawed. And you refuse to listen to the voice of reason here. I think it's pretty clear that you're motivated by a massive hate of Blizzard that makes it almost impossible to view this topic objectively.
As pointed out above, you're misrepresenting what he actually said. In that very interview Ion expressly states that "one of the challenges in designing WoW is that there’s a dozen different play styles". It is literally impossible to design a game that will satisfy all those playstyles at the same time, since many of them are diametrically opposed. As such the design of WoW will always be some sort of a compromise and some players' feedback will always be favoured over others.
YOUR problem is that you refuse to accept that the feedback you support wasn't what they ended up going with. And you know what, I don't even necessarily disagree with you on which feedback they should have listened to. Where we differ though is that I can accept it when they go with someone else's advice.
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Case in point.
Please tell me how exactly you expect all that "cool store stuff" to exist in the first place if you eliminate the significant revenue generated by the shop from the equation?
As a consumer I want to maximise the value I get out of the game. And when other players pay for store-mounts, that means more money available for the development budget (and yes, of course I realise that not ALL the money generated by the shop goes back into the game, but it's pretty clear that a lot of it does). Which means more content for me without me having to pay a cent more.
As a consumer, being anti-store is basically shooting yourself in the proverbial foot.
"Officer, this person tried to kill me!"
"Well, he didn't succeed, so where's the problem?"
I think their belief they can nail the balance right from the getgo is certainly false and this leads them down to making the same mistakes.
After all, those balance issues wouldn't be such a hotbutton issue if you would've been able to just swap freely around.
The talent system isn't broken because a given choice isn't viable, however if cannot swap around very easily, that choice effectively becomes a trap.
That doesn't change the fact he also acknowledged that they've been too stubborn.
And if you need 6 years to realize that, then the excuse of "hindsight" doesn't work.
We're not discussing Legion here, we're on the 3rd iteration of that nonsense.
That insight was already available after Legion, yet Blizzard refused to see it.
And you know how those hardcore raiders countered that argument?
Most casual players will simply not care about this system, in a similiar fashion how most players don't swap their talents around on an encounter basis, despite having the ability to do so.
Which, as it turns out, was actually a lot closer to the truth, by Blizzards own admission.
If you think the voice of reason stands on the side of people that made the same mistakes thrice in a row, i think that voice of reason is more a case of auditory hallucination.
The problem however is that doesn't apply to virtually everything within the game.
I think one can safely assume that an encounter that requires over 300+ attempts isn't something a casual is going to engage in.
However, whether a more casual enjoys or does not enjoy being freely to swap around certain customization options is certainly a lot less clear cut.
That's the crux, this entire rationalization to dismiss that feedback is based on the assumption that because a hardcore player doesn't like it, the more casual player enjoys it.
And that is just a fucking fallacy, how do you know that a player, whose endgame is to play a few bg's every weekend that s/he values the meaning of his/her choice?
Why wouldn't that player also enjoy to try out a different ability to spice things up without having to jump through artificial hoops?
Especially in the light of the fact that ironically, most players then still gravitated what was deemed the "best option", at which point all this work of trying to "muddy the waters" yielded little actual value to the player.
Last edited by Kralljin; 2021-11-19 at 11:31 AM.
I do believe AI is the future for reducing carries all together with AI party members. Develope it starting with small scale dungeons. Players could fill in missing parts of their group with AI members. If successful, work it's way up to raiding and PvP. It could be a solution. Many get carried becasue they see no other option to see that content. Some just want the easy loot and will still look to be carried.
Another option would be scaling Raids down to 5. I know many will poo poo this idea, call it blasphemy, and what not, but if raids were even more accessible, that could cut down on this.
I never liked vendors and would never purpose putting all gear up for sale on one, But I do like the idea of tier gear dropping from multiple sources. I would add it to WQ bounties and world bosses. They all would have different bonuses, but people like the getting the gear, but pushing them to activities they do not like isn't a way to do that.
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Again, I don't really see what the issue is. If it's a volume thing cluttering chat force it into a specific channel that is default off.
ehm... completely fucking up the token price so most people who now pay their game time via gold farming could no longer do it?
for absolutely no benefit?
yep, seems like reasonable thing to do...
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no they couldnt... they could leave it be and have people buy gold from 3rd parties and get regularly hacked by chinese scammers, which would cost blizza time and resources, or get their foot in the door and get a cut of the gold money...
literaly only thing they could do to stop gold selling was to ban everyone who buys gold (if its even possible to precisely track) and lost craploads of customers, so yeah, i wonder why they didnt do that...
Well. According to Blizzard's interview, if the store didn't exist then most likely, the items on it wouldn't either. The majority of the items in the store are made by the art team as side ideas that were not approved to be used at the current time they were made. So, they would just be stuck in a pile of scrapped designs, pending some day someone thinks it might be useful.
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
I didn't try to gaslight (and really, I am the only person who can know that). And as you pointed out I didn't succeed either. Which counters your argument that I might have done so unintentionally. So, you've completely failed to demonstrate the supposed crime you're accusing me of having committed at all. All you've done is repeatedly insisted on trying to pin a derogatory label on me that I don't deserve. I guess you were hoping that by trying to convince me I am a bad person I would back down?
And instead of just admitting that you erred and apologising (or in the very least just dropping it and moving on), you keep doubling down on this deplorable tactic. It ain't working and quite frankly I think it makes you look pretty bad.
To be clear. I was talking about balancing the needs of the vast majority of the playerbase against the specific demands of an elite few. You're talking about game balance. Something completely different.
Facts are meaningless without context. By taking this fact out of its context and essentially ignoring 95% of what he said, you're actually being pretty dishonest by trying to attach meaning to this fact that simply isn't there.
This argument is predicated on your insistence that they keep making the same mistakes. It seems pretty obvious to me that each expansion is different. Ergo, different mistakes. And to be perfectly honest, I am not even convinced that all of those "mistakes" are even mistakes at all, simply things you don't agree with.
The only things that each of these expansions have in common are that:
1) You seem to believe you know what the mistakes are (in spite of there being significant disagreement between all the various people involved)
2) You seem to believe that your suggestions offer the perfect solution (again, in spite of there being significant disagreement between the various people involved)
You represent a camp of players that clearly disagrees with Blizzard on some fundamental principles of game design. Ion even said it outright in that interview that people with a specific playstyle (the min-maxxers) have a way that they want things to be. Blizzard have a responsibility though to try and look after the needs of all their players, not just a small niche group. And this is why they will release things which you have told them you don't agree with.
The fact that a year into the expansion they accede to some of your demands doesn't prove, as you seem to think, that they were wrong. It is simply them compromising in order to find a balance between the needs of their different players, of whom you are also a part.
Ion acknowledged that in some cases they have been too stubborn. By implication there have been cases where they have not been stubborn. And likely times where they have not been stubborn enough. They know which are which based on how things turned out.
Please explain how this helps them when trying to determine how stubborn to be on new issues?
This isn't about who turned out to be correct in the end. It's about examining the reasons behind the decisions.
I am not standing on the side of anyone. I am simply correcting your false assertion that Blizzard just dismiss "excellent" feedback without reason. My reasons are simple enough:
1) Blizzard has a lot of feedback to consider
2) They cannot action all feedback
3) Sometimes they'll make decisions based on what they believe (rightly or wrongly) is in the best interests of the playerbase in its entirety rather than a small group
4) Recognising the "correct" choice is often not possible until after trying a few "wrong" choices
I see zero evidence of such an assumption being made.
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Really? This is the best you can come up with? You're trying to be funny with your sarcasm, but you've actually just embarrassed yourself. I guess I'll have to explain it for you then....
Back during WotLK, when WoW still had 12M active subscribers, this was more than sufficient to generate all the revenue that the game needed in order to justify the development budget the game had.
Fast forward to today where we have, optimistically, maybe one third of that number. In spite of the subscription rate not increasing, plus the effect of inflation, we also know that WoW continues to enjoy a development budget that has grown over the years. Oh, they also introduced a shop.
If you can't see the obvious connection, I am not sure any amount of explaining can help at this point.
Yeah, I know it's cool to hate on the shop. But like I say, it's ultimately pretty foolish to do so. I mean, you can choose to remain oblivious to the economic realities of the world, but that doesn't stop them from being very real.
Last edited by Raelbo; 2021-11-19 at 01:31 PM.
Gaslighting is not necessarily intentional or, you know, you could just not say state your intentions truthfully.
Legendaries: You randomnly receive an item with different very powerful effects
Corruption: You randomnly receive an item with different very powerful effects.
There are some differences between corruption and legion legendaries, but the main criticism from the playerbase in both instances was:
A lack of agency and choice in its acqusition.
Which Blizzard has resolved by introducing a vendor so the acquisition become more deterministic.
That is certainly a great similiarity and frankly, your argument also ignores that the design intent of Blizzard has remained the same: Introduce friction into the game.
That was the intent of all of those systems, people said: We don't want this with Blizzard responding "Oh well, but it's good for casuals!".
While those casuals looked up the Meta builds on Icyveins.
The problem is that they've dismissed with fallacious reasoning that their previous expansion has already proven as incorrect.
Disregarding some of the feedback, such as on Azerite Armor, was like "relying exclusively on the weekly chest as non raider for an Azerite piece seems like a bad idea".
Which you know, was just not addressed until 8.1, guess Blizzard had good reasons to dismiss that feedback as well.
I see that evidence even in your post:
By that, you essentially make the statement that being hardlocked on covenants or conduit energy was somehow beneficial to the casual community.To be clear. I was talking about balancing the needs of the vast majority of the playerbase (=Casual players) against the specific demands of an elite few (hardcore community)
Last edited by Kralljin; 2021-11-19 at 01:57 PM.
This whole post is great, but this particular point has been an ongoing issue since at least the WoD alpha, when the posters in the "secret forum" (handpicked by Blizzard themselves) started complaining about devs not only ignoring, but also gaslighting or straight up ridiculing their feedback and suggestions.
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
Happened a bit in mop though was less of an issue. It was something involving retro druids if I recall but that is casting my mind back half a decade.
The issue with blizzard has always been developers with pet projects. Just look at that bird pepe that was kinda neat for a patch. He is going to get items and rewards based around him forever now because he was a dev pet project. While I don't mind something like that it shows a bit of the mindset.
Blizzard is in the unenviable position of them knowing they are fucked but unwilling to trust their most knowledgeable players out of mistrust and fear of alienating the broader player base. That being said the broader player base isn't knowledgeable enough or critical enough to offer feedback of any worth when it comes to gameplay design as we saw with the " Muh meaningful choices" that was spouted everywhere here.
Last edited by Relapses; 2021-11-19 at 03:15 PM.
Since 9.2 is more or less finalized par some balancing, when exactly is this council gonna even start? For 11.0?
This is pretty much it. Token purchases/sales are private transactions that no one has any business questioning. The store has been an issue ever since the sparkle pony which was eleven years ago and the arguments against it have not gotten any smarter since. Same for the WoW token although that's been around for only six years. If you're against tokens and the store don't buy the tokens and never use the store. Or go play the various Classic versions where the store is largely irrelevant.
Neither is going away and the endless millions of words about it are essentially pointless. Telling Blizzard how to run their business (as opposed to the game) has only worked once in my memory (Diablo III cash shop) and it's very unlikely to ever work again now that the pressure is on to generate more revenue.
Removal of the cash shop wouldn't change subscription numbers, MAU's or any other metric of any importance except to push the revenue numbers down. Anyone who actually believes that if all of the pets and mounts in the store were put into the game for gold there would be some giant rush to resubscribe to the game is kidding themselves. The actual play of the game is the same as if there were no cash shop available. The real problems with the game would remain exactly as they are now.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-11-19 at 03:59 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Give it up. You heard this term "gaslighting" and thought it's a wonderful way of attacking anyone with the gall to oppose your viewpoint. But you've been called on it now and found horribly wanting.
These were not mistakes though.
I mean I totally acknowledge the fact that there is/was a segment of the playerbase, particularly among the min/max crowd (who are really a pretty small minority) that hated this design. But not everyone did. Many were just fine with it. And as I have already pointed out, making these items more predictably obtainable several months down the line isn't the admission of some kind of error on the part of the devs that you seem to believe it is.
No, it has not been proven incorrect. This remains a difference of opinions. You want to argue that the side you support is somehow objectively correct while everyone else is just wrong. Sorry, but you'd need to come up with a much better argument than you have at this point to convince me of that.
You are so full of it.
First of all, your accusation was that Blizzard assume that being bad for minmaxxers = good for casuals. You've provided no evidence to that end.
Second of all, my argument is entirely agnostic on the question of whether or not those features are actually beneficial to the casual community. I am saying that Blizzard believes they are and this was their stated (by Ion in the article I linked and you seem to have largely ignored except for the small cherry picked snippets that suit your narrative) and that this is the motive for their choice to not follow the advice that you believe they should have. The entire point of which is to counter your assertion that Blizzard simply ignores feedback all the time for no good reason. And again, I am not saying that they made the correct choice necessarily every time, simply that they didn't ignore the feedback, and that they had good reasons for the choices they did make.