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I see that old red herring is doing the rounds again: "Make content harder and people learn to play." WRONG It was tested in early Cata and failed. It cost Blizzard 2 million subs and that was increasing at a rate of 500k to 1M per quarter until they took action. This is a game. Most people treat it as a game and not a lifestyle choice. The small minority for whom the game is their "hobby" and part of their identity are prepared to persist and improve in order to keep playing the game. The MAJORITY are not. To them it is just a toy and they are not prepared to "work" to play a crappy childish little computer game about pixies and fairies. Blizzard design this game for the MAJORITY. The majority are made up of good and bad players. What they have in common is the requirement to play in automated/adhoc groups as they can't commit to organised play. Because bad players do NOT learn, and because the automated group systems allow them to keep joining, they end up destroying the game for good and bad players alike. That situation did not improve, the bad players didn't learn and subs just kept dropping. Therefore as the game is targetted at the majority it cannot function when as per 4.0 groups get smashed to bits unless everyone has "learned". I repeat again - people do NOT learn, the system breaks down and fails. As Pallander said earlier in the thread - this product is not for you. The irrelevant but over vocal 3% (or thereabouts) should go to a product like RIFT which has far less players, a far smaller budget but still has hardcore focussed old school raid experience you like where 1% of the popular have done the final raid tier. They can afford to focus on the 3% because they are a far smaller product. Warcraft is for the mainstream audience and the views expressed here are not mainstream. 3% consume content too fast. If you tune it so that the 3% take a while to consume it, the side effect is that the other 97% don't consume it all... Stating the obvious now but is bad for business! |
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Tested in early cata? It was much more severe in TBC, which was the peak of players, kinda disproves your whole argument.
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Edited by Darkblazer on 04/07/12 12:38 (BST)
This! People In Tbc was stupid having a motivation playing the game. And actually enjoy this game. People now are amazing since can watch Tv and kill bosses 2 ** Tbc model was for me simply the best. HAVING WHAT TO DO. Not like now....play for the 2 hours content.. |
I'd understand what you imply about accessibility in the way you imply it if all these changes would be: - teleporting you to the dungeon: oki, its removing time spent, nothing else. - forming a random group of tank/healer/dps that can complete the encounter using a combination of available skills. - any combination of classes should have a complete enough set of abilities available to kill a boss. But many ppl understand accessibility of the game as: 1. The random group should not need to use anything but basic skills to overcome the encounter. That means for ex, you do not need CC. CC-ing was an important part in TBC dungeons (and I'm not using them as an example of rose tinted glasses thing, I'm using them as an example of dungeons that stayed relevant and kept ppl awake even when overgearing it). The issue back then was that not all classes had cc skills, which made a case of "bring the class, not the player". Ok, so the solution is : give all classes a form of cc. Ok, they added some more cc-s to the game and shamans and ret palas became less of an anathema as they were in places like mgt hc. Then they made that all cc can be cast without putting you in combat. Alright, a bit stupid for the immersion to see mobs indifferent to their brother bawling like a sheep, but lets say it was convenient - and killed the need for any communication in the progress, because if you are a savage with the manners of a bear and a bad mood, you should still be allowed to play an mmo the way you see fit. Right now, I cant think of any place cc is needed in the slightest. 2. Any random group can complete an encounter even when ignoring 90% of its mechanics. Zonozz on LFR requires one person that knows what's the deal with that purple person. Nobody else. Ultraxion does not require anybody knowing about hour of twilight, you can just ignore it, it will not one shot you. Spine of deathwing: its funny how they even left the text telling you that deathwing is rolling, when he doesn't do it in LFR. I dont remember if LFR spine actually has the healing debuff, never noticed it. Bottom line: you would need a horrible group to wipe in LFR. Funny fact: I saw more wipes in LFR 2 months after release than at the start. Ppl went there cautious and saw the place can be laughed at and then couldn't be arsed to even bother with mechanics anyway. LFR bred a new generation of idiots. Looking at the fact that you need to wait for the timer for rolls at the end of a rotation, I suspect some of them are just afk or complete idiots that cant read. 3. If you didn't manage to kill a boss in 2 months from release, you shall accept a nerf and keep accepting it, because clearly, if you spent your Christmas with you family, and didn't raid, it means you are a retarded person of a degree that will be decided every 3 weeks by blizzard, and every time they will adjust the nerf to the next degree of retardation. Yes, I know I can take my guild in DS now and turn off the buff to see a challenge. Same way you could say that in an old raid you could tell your raiders to take off their pants and do it like that. The fact that you have the possibility of making it harder doesn't mean that defeating the boss without pants is the same feeling as defeating a boss for the first time. We saw DW dead in LFR, we saw him dead in normal, we saw him dead on a various combination of platforms for the meta and we saw him dead in hc. We dont want to see him dead with us not wearing pants too. We want to beat the game not beat ourselves. So, did I explain well enough what I see as accessibility as and what it really is actually? |
Are we talking about bad players or just inexperienced ones? When I started playing I had issues moving around the game, as I had never played an mmo. I believe I got ranked nowadays on several boss kills. I learned because I had to. As for cata start, the error they made was combine heroics that were more harsh than tbc ones with the concept of LFG. And the hcs were more harsh from one point of view, and its not actual mechanics of the place, in case you want to tell me they weren't harder: Healers class differences. Some healing classes had an easier time than others and that made a world of difference. In the beginning of cata, if your healer happened to be a priest, you were in for a rough ride, because some classes were released broken. Yes, they were broken, because they had to buff them by 200% in february to bring them in line with the rest. The ride wasnt bumpy just with weaker healers though. Fact was, no healer was used anymore to mind his mana after the spamfest of wrath. They had to learn again. I learned. There was no difference for dps. They just got merely annoyed by necessity of mana breaks or cc. If your healer was handling his mana, you didnt wipe. If he didnt, you did. Simple as that. Still, 2 weeks after release I was meeting better groups in LFG than at the launch. Ppl knew you need cc and were starting to use it again. As for those lost subs, I doubt many of them came back even with the nerfed content. A lot of ppl buy a new game, especially when its launched around christmas and they could try it out on holiday and ditch it after. I'd bet half of the canceled subs were more about that than about the fact that the game is too hard. If ppl quitted wow over being "too time consuming" wow would have died in vanilla. |
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Edited by Pallander on 04/07/12 12:53 (BST)
You explained what you see as accessibility and then you described some elements of the game that have more to do with difficulty than accessibility. But I get the feeling that you are forcing an argument on this matter whereas I see that we have more common ground.
For the first point, I've been saying all the time that the game can and should be slightly more difficult and most certainly require more than smahsing three buttons per class/spec. But this is a matter of difficulty, not a matter of accessibility. Nowhere have I said that any group should be able to complete an encounter even ignoring 90% of its mechanics. I do however feel that any group that has an appropriate set of players for needed roles no matter what their classes are (eg. the tank should be able to just as well be a prot pally or feral druid without serious hindrance) should be able to complete a dungeon/raid if they have the skill. But for the nerf thingy. I'm afraid that on this matter I stand with the people who say that if you don't like it, disable the buff. If you don't, it's your decision and there's really nothing to complain about. |
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Yeah I just don't get it. At first in cata it was abit hard to get a foot in the PvE. There where a lot of raids to clear. There was stuff like interrupting, kiting, banish elementals still in game. And you could be proud of having a fully epic geared toon. Now I can gear a alt for DS from hitting 85 just in a matter of hours. Not even heroic raiding gear is impressive anymore
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Cataclysm had a great start; heroics required players to actually do something. The problem is that wrathbabies whined so Blizzard nerfed them.
Blizzard then released Zandalari's... They we're easier than first set of heroics (pre-nerf) but still required brains and tactics.. Then we got Hour of Twilight heroics... These can pretty much be done in your sleep. Blizzard then stated that they're happy with the difficulty of HoT heroics and that MoP heroics will be even easier. So yeah, of course we consume content too fast; because it can be rushed in like 5 minutes. As for raids, there's only one raid to ever do now, because previous raids are a waste of time. |
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Problem is, as someone correctly pointed out, that Blizzard are no longer adding content, they are replacing content, and on top of that they are nerfing the current content to hell and back so most of us lose any interest in it.
Thank god, I'm still playing some casual noobish pvp otherwise I'd be long gone :P *inbe4 "if you don't like it quit": your thinking is quite wrong, you may actually think about voicing your concerns to the company provider. I am the client, they are the provider. THEY listen to us, not the other way around (as it is atm) *inbe4 "yes QQ moar so Blizzard listen to us!": they do NOT care. they have a marketing plan and zero connection/interest in what we say. (reference: any GC interview). Enjoy while you still can ... |
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But the problem with that is, It's the same mechanic same fight and nothing changes other than how hard he hits and his health. Which is boring I think if the spiced the gear abit not just the same bloody colour would help more. Even if they changed the mechanic of the fight for every buff you take would make it much more enjoyable for the player/guild. I also think they should change the whole gear of LFR to the normal it should be totally different little things like that help. |
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Edited by Saphiramoon on 04/07/12 14:35 (BST)
You could make the content more challenging by playing it with a bad internet connection or with your monitor upside down, but would you do it? Giving a default buff and leaving the option of deactivating it feels artificial, and that's the reason why nobody does it. As I said, we want to defeat the game not hit ourselves in the face while raiding so it feels more challenging. Its a case of us versus the game, or us versus other guilds, not of us versus ourselves, because most of us are not masochists. Raiding guilds are competitive. They look at the other guilds progress and try to beat it. If there's something that will help getting that kill before the others do, they will take it. They wont turn off a buff because they know the others wont, and then the race is not fair anymore. And after you killed a boss, its dead. You don't care to buff him for the next kill, only the first one matters. Especially when you already killed him on 2 more levels of difficulty. Psychologically, it doesn't work. How many guilds have you heard that turned off the buff? Don't you think there's a reason for it? Its like this buff is a stealthed intermediary mode. So you get to kill a boss in LFR, nerfed normal, normal, nerfed hc and hc mode. For me, that's too much. I loved the story on diablo normal (but felt too easy), enjoyed it on hell, at nightmare i was already skipping through texts but was still fun, and on inferno I was plain bored. It's cool for diablo to work like that because its not a sub game, and you can sit on it and amuse yourself with various difficulties whenever you want, not depending on what 9/24 other ppl feel like at that moment. For wow, the same tactic feels !@#$. |
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Edited by Falc on 04/07/12 16:34 (BST)
They've removed a lot of the "grind" from the mmo. Rep grinds / gear grinds before stepping into a higher tier of raids etc. This does make the game more accessible to people who have less time, but it does leave people who have decent amounts of time less to do.
So i agree with the OP. Put the grinds back into our mmo - so we would have more things to do. PS: The darkmoon mounts / pets taking many months to achieve is a step in the right direction. edit:
Looking back i find the, inefficiency to be a good thing - because it didn't allow everyone to run everything to their hearts content. They still looked forward to getting home and running that dungeon 1 more time in the evening. |
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They've removed a lot of the "grind" from the mmo I think they're fixing that in MOP with optional but real slow grind of valor points over the cap. Unless I remember my blues wrong. |
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Agree 100% |
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Edited by Saphiramoon on 04/07/12 15:12 (BST)
Same feeling here. In the end I don't care if I spend one hour running one dungeon or running it 3 times, as long as its good fun, and repeating one thing on fast forward doesn't feel more fun. I'm sad to say, but the newer wow made me a more impatient and intolerant person. |
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As so many people say in the old days; If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Not to mention it would help you if you posted on your main instead of slagging off another guy on a level 1 alt to save your main from getting flamed. Not to mention Jito has made a massive load of interesting and true comments; so if you can't be constructive and offer a counter argument, and can only insult someone for being smarter than you; then just go.. On Topic: I'm a tad divided in this topic. On one hand, I completely see the OP's point; content is skipped to a point of not even being funny anymore. You can dungeon hop from 15-60 in a matter of days and the mobs and bosses in old vanilla dungeons have become so easy; you could solo them at the same level. With heirlooms I personally find the game now over-run with vanity projects and arrogant idiots who think they're the greatest thing around at level 16 cause they got a bunch of looms. That is one thing I miss about old Vanilla/TBC; the dungeon runs were tough, brutal and one bad pull could end it all. Now a bad pull; at most, causes the healer a need for a manabreak and the occasional tank dies; but no wipes. However, one thing I certainly don't miss is the way quests were in the old vanilla days. In most zones you had search all over the place for them. At least in Cata they are very linear and straight; one quest leads you to another. Not to mention the storyline is way better; with your character getting personally involved in the day-to-day War with the opposite faction. On this character in particular, I skipped out a massive load of zones and therefore content, to get high level as quick as possible. I fully admit; I regret it. Seriously regret it. There is no social aspect in this game anymore and the casual player has become more needy and demanding. Personally I have never raided old MC or BWL back in Vanilla days; I can openly admit I was a noob back then. Even when TBC came out, I wasn't a raider; I was an Rper, but still; the dungeons were tough, CC was desperately needed and the quests were tough to solo. I mean I remember on my first and only level 70 starting the Netherwing daily grind. Epic content. But as others have stated, the players that want it old school ( I slightly include myself on it ) are in the minority. I would love it if Blizzard would take away Looms; make all dungeons like Cata when your first do them: tough, challenging and fun. On this character, I've had several wipes in Cata dungeons and no one has left because it reminded it us of the old school. However; we got to move with the times. The masses that play WoW these days are casual players and because of that, Blizzard have caterered to the Masses. I do not, However, see this thread as just another QQ, but an interesting point risen up. Personally I can see why the frustation that many of you have. Back in Vanilla, you can gladly walk around and claim "My guild has downed Raggy" and everyone would be shocked and treat you with respect. It was truly an achievement. It was the same with Nefarian in BWL, Illidan in BT and Kil'jaeden in SWP (to which none of them I did) But now; you can claim "I beat the Madness of Deathwing" and it will mean as much as saying "I found Linen cloth off a humanoid mob". Everyone can do Madness, which means there's no major victory in it. It's hollow and empty because everyone and their granny can do DS or FL. It's one of the worst things I hate about Cata, although I do love the game as well. LFR is a terrible idea because there is no longer a raid guild sucess for downing deathwing or Raggy 2. Every guild can. The only major achievement you can feel is when you go and solo Maggy in Hellfire or manage the skill and impressive feat of soloing TK, BT and SWP. BUT; the idea of LFD is great in my opinion. Takes little time to find a group to do with a dungeon that can be wiped in 20 minutes compared to the hours it use too. However, Raiding is the only aspect of WoW. You everything from being a world event grinder to PvP. Heck, there's even Rp to consider. Maybe it's just me, but part of Cata content is skipped; others aren't. I'm sorta balanced here :P |
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I think they're fixing that in MOP with optional but real slow grind of valor points over the cap. You can perceive it as a grind. However, keep in mind that Mists of Pandaria also adds scenarios, pet battles, challenge modes and plenty of daily quests to do at level 90, which will definitely help in providing more content to do. And more importantly, do whatever you want to do. |
#157
04/07/2012
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Will challenge modes be nerfed if people aren't completing them in massive numbers too? This is my main worry for that particular system. I thought heroic raids wouldn't be nerfed too but they were.
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I think they're fixing that in MOP with optional but real slow grind of valor points over the cap. When will heroics become heroic again? Epics become epic? Normal raids challenging? Tier jump less idiotic? |
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I see that old red herring is doing the rounds again: People didn't want to learn. Blizzard should have made it more rewarding and kept the sense of progression. They nerfed everything so fast that it was just pointless to improve in the first place. Why bother when you can just wait for nerfs? Why bother when the gear will become free? TBC heroics were way harder than Cata ones, and setups were much more restrictive, and yet TBC ended with 11 million subs, whereas Cata lost 2 million. The start of Cata wasn't punishing enough. It was hardest on healers but needed to punish the failure of DPS more. Like if you stand in fire for more than one second you die. If you stand in cleaves you die. Sooner or later it would become second nature. The only place we can find that now is PVP. Cata lost those subs not because things were too hard, but because there was so little to do. Ulduar and IC were both hard for normal players, and yet Wrath had 12 million subs. |
