I just don't understand the people behind the design decisions anymore.
From MMO-champion's twitter recap: linear progression was the worst idea you ever could return to.. you leave behind lots of alt-players and returners. We understand that. But the alternative is that other players feel their accomplishments have no meaning if rapid catch up exists.
and then Which players? Not the majority. I think you're seeing the tree and not the forest on this one. We heard it a lot in LK and Cataclysm, and we could infer it a lot from what players were doing even if they didn't say it.
So they weren't actually told that people were unhappy with how it was, they just jumped to the conclusion that people were unhappy with it?
The 'best' part about it is; I'm sure they have an astounding amount of numbers they can look at, all sorts of internal metrics we can't even imagine; what players were doing in general before they unsubbed, play cycles, styles, etc.
For all that, the lesson they apparently came away with from the incredible popularity of WotLK, particularly Tournament on, and then the soul crushing difficulty for many players of the Cata heroics and the intital cata raids, leading to a massive drop off right out of the gate that they never recovered from, even if they appeared to learn their lessons with a lot of good content with the Hyjal stuff and 4.3...
The lesson they learned is that the epeens of a few players are so fucking important that you have to take away a lot of accessability and easy of access to content for the vast vast majority of players, in order to make those few happy.
Oh, and by the way, even if they weren't actually complaining about it, to boot.
I see it like this: The kind of player that gets butthurt over that sort of thing may unsub, but they'll probably come back when there's a new tier. And since they're already geared, they can jump right in. But the player that burns out over having to grind up alts..or even a main that starts late in the expansion...might just say "screw this" and find something else to do with their time. And once they feel a character has fallen too far behind to catch up, it's probably getting shelved.
I imagine the real issue is that they're terrified people will just subscribe once every few months, quickly board the catch-up train and see all the content in a single month, and then be perfectly happy to unsubscribe for another 6+ months. And honestly, if you're not in a cutting edge raiding guild or highly social guild, why wouldn't you just do that and save yourself $100-150 a year?
Of course, as always, they over-corrected and are making everything such a chore that it's just driving people away entirely.
The proper thing to do would have been to encourage alts if you wanted to maintain your more casual subscriber base. They don't care about crossing the finish line first in the raid rush, they just want something to do that doesn't feel like a chore.
Edit: Though the epeen whiners do whine the loudest, so perhaps they try to keep them somewhat sated to quiet them from generating negative word of mouth or whatever. A dude yelling from the rooftops about the game being dumbed down and terrible could dissuade a few new users from checking it out after all.
do you guys feel that lfr gives loot often enough with the current system? Yesterday was my first loot in over a month.
The numbers work fine overall. I do wish there was a fix for perennially unlucky players, which couldn't be exploited.
How about, oh idk, the box of gold you get also has VP that can go over the 1000 cap per week? It can be something trivial like 50, but enough that you can buy a piece after a week of shit luck.
Or if they want to cling to RNG: Box of gold has an additional item that can be turned into Elder Charms. I'll call it a Zen Charm. 5 Zen Charms = 1 Elder Charm with no particular cap per week. (other than being throttled by # of boss rolls)
These are just 2 ideas I pulled out of my ass in 45 seconds.
He shouldn't discuss these things on twitter. Regardless of intent, he's probably not saying what he means or is the correct response thanks to 140 character limit.
He shouldn't discuss these things on twitter. Regardless of intent, he's probably not saying what he means or is the correct response thanks to 140 character limit.
Wish indeed
I see this said a lot, and I wish I could believe it.
The problem is, even when it feels like "no, he couldn't mean that, I'll just blame it on the character limit", actual implementation of things so far in MoP have been pretty much as stated in the tweets.
I just can't get over his dilemma over how they could possibly create a fix that couldn't be exploited.
Person doesn't get loot, put some way to get loot in the gold box. The guy that got something doesn't get both, so it can't be exploited. How is this hard?
I just can't get over his dilemma over how they could possibly create a fix that couldn't be exploited.
Person doesn't get loot, put some way to get loot in the gold box. The guy that got something doesn't get both, so it can't be exploited. How is this hard?
Or how about a progressive drop system for LFR alone, like they already have for quest drops.
There's no real way to exploit it, if you get loot, the progression drops back to zero, if you don't get loot, it ramps up until you get something. But you still have a chance either way.
Make the progression per boss, so you can't just go through all of, say MSV, hoping to get nothing, then jump in Terrace for a better chance at loot. Each boss has it's own progressive ramp up that don't apply to other boss drops.
There's no reasons someone (me...) should walk away from the same boss empty handed with two loot chances every single week, ever, over and over.
With LFD catchups, a boss doesn't drop what you want? You requeue and try again. Someone takes your drop? Irritating, but reqeue.
LFR? No drops? Better luck next week, and better hope you get something then, or another week.
Since drops are now per player and not raid wide, there's no reason they couldn't do something like this, it'd make a lot of players happy and since something they need to fucking remember, LFR isn't for progression, there's no real risk to imbalancing actual progression by giving players what they've been working for legitimately. You have to put in the time, why keep saying "well, it's too damn bad, wish we could help!"?
In your bag of gold is 1/X of a medalion, after completing the medalion you can turn it in for a MegaUltraCharm of Good Fortune. The MegaUltraCharm of Good Fortune is used to guarntee one loot drop from any boss in the LFR Difficulty. You may only have one MegaUltraCharm of Good Fortune at a time, only one MegaUltraCharm of Good Fortune can be used a week.
Make X = 30-34 depending on how often you feel 1 piece of loot should be awarded per LFR week
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited January 2013
Apparently there is now a flying goat in the Blizzard Store: http://t.co/1uapOE6F
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
Oh, and while we're on the "Blue shit that boggles the fucking mind" topic, I can't let this one from last week get away unmentioned:
Valor Points Cap Feedback Im confused? You dont want people to feel like they have to cap every week? Why a cap then?
There will unfortunately always be people who feel like they have to reach the cap every week, and if there is no cap, then these people will make their own cap which is typically the maximum possible.
If we had set no cap, then the theoretical maximum of Valor Points possible to acquire in one week would serve as the cap instead... and reaching the theoretical maximum of Valor Points possible to acquire in one week would require a lot of time to play every single day. If that was the case, how do you think that would impact the people who are feeling that they are "forced" to reach the cap every week in order to maximise their gearing process? How do you think that would impact the people who are trying to gear up their alts? How would it impact the new player levelling a new character trying to catch up with his friends who invited him to the game? How would it impact the progress in guilds with a combination of members with a lot of free time to play and members with precious little time to play?
The cap is both a blessing and a curse. Some are glad it is there, some absolutely despise it and want it gone, some just want it lower, and some want it higher. We are trying to find the best spot for the cap to accommodate as many people as possible, but we cannot please everyone, and that is why the cap is always under constant evaluation. Community feedback on this topic is therefore also super important, as that will help the developers in their evaluations on whether or not the cap is in a good spot.
some just want it lower
ಠ_ಠ
Who the fuck wants VPs to come in even slower than they already do? Blizzard is actually listening to players like this? How many weeks (hint: in the context of video games, a week is not a short period of time) do they think it should take to get one item or upgrade one item slightly?
He shouldn't discuss these things on twitter. Regardless of intent, he's probably not saying what he means or is the correct response thanks to 140 character limit.
Wish indeed
I see this said a lot, and I wish I could believe it.
The problem is, even when it feels like "no, he couldn't mean that, I'll just blame it on the character limit", actual implementation of things so far in MoP have been pretty much as stated in the tweets.
I agree with you on the implementation part, but the kind of shit he answers with these wishywashy replies should be addressed in a developer blog or something, not in a tweet.
Regardless its very depressing and doesn't make me inclined to start playing again.
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
We heard it a lot in LK and Cataclysm, and we could infer it a lot from what players were doing even if they didn't say it.
So they weren't actually told that people were unhappy with how it was, they just jumped to the conclusion that people were unhappy with it?
They should post the data that's supposedly telling them this so that the players can arrive at a similar conclusion on their own.
One of the neat things about Squenix is that once a year they'll post a HUGE collection of pie charts and graphs that show you what the playerbase is doing in both of their online FF games. Sure, the info is hardly exhaustive. But there's enough there to give some general ideas of what the players are doing. Similarly, Blizzard doesn't need to provide every last scrap of data on player activities. But if they've got access to data that suggests players don't want what "catch-up progression", then they should post enough data to suggest that such a counter-intuitive idea might actually be true.
We heard it a lot in LK and Cataclysm, and we could infer it a lot from what players were doing even if they didn't say it.
So they weren't actually told that people were unhappy with how it was, they just jumped to the conclusion that people were unhappy with it?
They should post the data that's supposedly telling them this so that the players can arrive at a similar conclusion on their own.
One of the neat things about Squenix is that once a year they'll post a HUGE collection of pie charts and graphs that show you what the playerbase is doing in both of their online FF games. Sure, the info is hardly exhaustive. But there's enough there to give some general ideas of what the players are doing. Similarly, Blizzard doesn't need to provide every last scrap of data on player activities. But if they've got access to data that suggests players don't want what "catch-up progression", then they should post enough data to suggest that such a counter-intuitive idea might actually be true.
I love the XI Census data. I don't really have anything to add other than that. It fascinates me. I just like looking at all the numbers on job diversity, what jobs are using what merits etc.
Oh, on the topic of metrics stuff, another thing the blues have been doing lately is saying that X activities are really popular with players (dailies, 2s arenas, etc.), but invariably those activities are either the only or the easiest way to obtain some sort of rewards. And yet they also have been shooting down various suggestions for years because then Y would become the best way to do something and players would feel "forced" to do it.
So apparently it's OK for people to be pigeonholed into activities, but only the activities that the devs deem appropriate.
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
I've been with WoW since the open beta, and not let my account lapse at all over that time.
Unless 5.2 comes out and absolutely blows me away in every aspect of the gameplay (sans pvp because I just do not care about that anymore), I will not make it to 5.3. But I may glance towards it at 6.0.
gold/gold on Sha of Fear in Terrace again on my pally.
Eight weeks and running!
I think they need to burn some more incense or wish a little harder or whatever they fuck they plan on doing to make a not completely horseshit loot system for LFR.
Maybe my DK will have better luck (olol), I've been having more fun with him lately anyway.
While I'm on the topic of the shit loot system in LFR, I just want to go back to something Blizzard said awhile back re: the new loot system. They'd rather players be mad at the game than at other players.
Are they fucking stupid?
They....do want money right? Players you can put on ignore, actively ignore, probably won't ever see again anyway (in the case of BG's or LFR/LFD). The game? That's what we pay for. The one thing of all the things about WoW the devs should actively want players to not hate is the game itself. What kind of fucking moron decided it would be better for a player to be furious at the game, and probably just outright quit playing, than be pissed at another player; that will fade quickly and you'll move on?
It's a cake that has shit in the center. Good, quality, high fiber shit. The rest of the cake is delicious. This has always been the case. You just eat the good cake and avoid the shit. You know where the shit is, it's no secret, there's no surprise shit; but in the past the shit had icing on it so that even though you knew "Thar be Shite!", you didn't have it staring you in the face. Previous expansion packs have worked hard to increase the delicious cake:shit ratio so there was less and less shit to try to hide.
But along comes MoP and somewhere along the line the chefs learned that, wow, there's actually a population of players that actually enjoy the shit part, more than the rest of the cake. Sure, it's only a very very small minority, but fewer people were eating their cake last time around, so maybe this time, lets take the icing off the shit, so you have to stare at it all the time, and increase the amount of shit again! And hey, since there are players who like the shit, lets put little pockets of shit throughout the rest of the otherwise tasty cake, because those players who enjoy the shit should be able to have their shit all the time! Sure, it's harder for most of the cake lovers to avoid shit this time around, but we have to please the people who truely love a well placed dump!
And here we are. With our spotted shit cake. There's still a lot of tasty cake to be had, and in fact as I've posted every bitch this morning I've been partaking of the tasty part.
I would love for them to move the VP cap to 1k per level 90 and have the currency be account wide. Want to grind forever if you have tons of alts? Great, do it. Want just enough VP to quickly upgrade an item? Blow through a few heroics on a tank. That would solve the VP cap and offer a catch up mechanic. Your main could easily gear your alts or your could play the character you want to to gear your main.
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
I would love for them to move the VP cap to 1k per level 90 and have the currency be account wide. Want to grind forever if you have tons of alts? Great, do it. Want just enough VP to quickly upgrade an item? Blow through a few heroics on a tank. That would solve the VP cap and offer a catch up mechanic. Your main could easily gear your alts or your could play the character you want to to gear your main.
The VP cap is....whatever. My problem with VP in MoP isn't the lower cap, it's the lower gain. Yes, wonderful, there are more ways to earn VP; but how it was in 4.3 worked well. You could run both LFR's and like 4 LFD's and cap it on a character. It wasn't a trivial amount of time it'd take but it wasn't unbearable either. Now, you can run five LFR's and not even be halfway to the cap; and then if you want to finish it up via LFD, hope you don't want to do it in one day! I loved when GC tried to say that it was less of a chore to log on every day and run a dungeon for the same amount of VP, instead of being able to earn it when you have some free time on your own terms. The lack of logic was astounding and I'm still feeling that seismic shift in thinking today.
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
And that is an honest question btw ...
It has to do with old raids becoming obsolete when new raids are released. Gearing up will be difficult when you have to run old raids to gear up in order to run new raids, because no one will want to run older content and go through the same thing again just to gear up alts. In the past there were ways of bridging the gap without through five mans and JP vendors absorbing previous tiers VP items, but neither of those seem to be options, this time.
EDIT: I mean, look at dungeon/LFR queues now. 25-50 minute queues for Terrace LFR. That's not going to improve when NEW content is released
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
And that is an honest question btw ...
from an individual's standpoint, it's the fact/feeling that you're perpetually "behind." yes, you have to gear up a fresh 90 a bit (maybe a week), but then you're doing current content. once there's a new raid tier, you gear up a bit, then run old content for weeks/months to catch up. (with the added bonus that less people are doing that content now, making it take even longer)
but the real problem is what that does to guilds.
let's say there are 3 top-end guilds on your server. one guild's tank quits/leaves for another guild. with quick catch up mechanisms, someone can start playing an alt painlessly, and there's a much larger pool of potential recruits.
without catch-up, your choices become: poach someone from another guild (leaving that guild in the same situation you're in now) or perpetually run old content to gear up new alts/recruits, halting progression. this is what the raid scene was like in vanilla/tbc.
My favorite part of that tweet is the "I do wish...", as if he's completely helpeless and a slave to the system.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Keep in mind he's also admitted they don't like all the instant and/or AoE CC that's in the game and what it does to PvP, as if it just seeped into WoW through osmosis. WE WERE POWERLESS TO STOP ALL THESE INSTANT CC SPELLS AND GLYPHS FROM BEING PUT INTO THE GAME! WE ARE BUT MERE DEVELOPERS!
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
And that is an honest question btw ...
Linear progression isn't a problem at the top of an Xpack, and never has been.
It's 4 patches and three tiers later.
On an individual players level, say you get a new class to 90 in patch 5.4. Three tiers in. If you want to get that character into current content you'll have to
1) Run LFD till you get to 460+
2)Run MSV LFR till you get to 470+
3)Run HoF/Terrace LFR till you get 486+ (hint, nothing in those LFR's has ilvl above 483, so hope you bought some VP gear to up it even more)
4)Run 5.2 LFR's (4 of them) until you get ilvl <insert number>
5)????
6)Profit! You can now enter the most current LFR!
Doesn't sound so bad, when you read it right there, right? Well, LFR has a weekly lockout. That first week in MSV, don't get any loot at all, which is entirely possible and likely? Not high enough ilvl to get into the other LFR's so 3) is pushed back another week. Next week, maybe you eek out a 470 and start running the 3 483 LFR's. Since you need 486 (currently) to get into 5.2 LFR's plan on being there for a long time (I just passed 486 on my pally, running everything every week since they've been released, it is now Janurary...LFR started in October iirc).
So before you get to step 6 you're looking at, easily, months of old and outdated LFR's. Likely with much higher queue times since they won't be the only thing for players to run on their mains.
Just to see current content. You could easily be barely high enough ilvl to se 5.4 content by the time 6.0 comes out. I'm not even exaggerating. Alternately you could have fucking insane luck and get there in a few weeks. But the latter is pretty unlikely.
On "mains" you're probably running stuff as it comes out, so it's not as huge of a deal, you'll be progressing normally anyway. The issue isn't with mains (for active players anyway, more on that in a sec), but with alts.
And this is just from an individual perspective.
So lets go with individuals who aren't active players. Maybe they take time off for awhile. They played at launch of MoP had fun, but shelved it for awhile and decide to come back in 5.4. See that above? Can you imagine telling someone who wants to replay the game for fun that, oh, by the way, you have to do this old stuff for months before you can play current content with everyone else, your guild mates and your friends. Have fun! See you in the fall!
Yeah. Terrible design. Astoundingly terrible.
Now from a guilds perspective. Lets say they got a new recruit, invited a new raider to the group, or need a specific class alt for progression.
They have to either 1) all of the above sitting on their thumbs waiting for said player to get geared to current content or 2) make their active raiders go back and re-raid all of the old raids over and over again until said player has gear sufficent to do the current content. This isn't fair to the active raiders by any means and it would quickly burn out pretty much any normal raid group and kill their desire to do the new stuff; plus you're putting off how long said guild can even start new content because they're waiting for said player.
So from the guilds perspective you're potentially holding an entire guild back to get even one player up to speed because of an asinine gear system.
They have done this. They did it in Vanilla and most of TBC. It was terrible. So terrible that blizzard has said on mulitiple occasions how terrible it was, and have actively moved far far away from it because it was so bad.
So they gave us the catch up system. Started a bit in TBC with tokens for gear from Heroics and stuff, but went all in with WotLK with each major tier (outside of Ulduar) having a catch up 5 man(s) that players could get quickly up to speed to do whatever. It wasn't as good as raid gear and was often itemized decently, at best, but it was sufficent.
And this carried through all of WotLK and all of Cata, with the ICC 5mans, ZA/ZG, End of Time 5mans. Every major patch had an 'in between' catch up system that gave you gear on par with the previous tier of raiding so that you could get into the new stuff quickly and easily. This didn't disrupt raiding because old content was old, and they wanted players in the new stuff. I guess a few people got butthurt that the EoT 5mans had Firelands level gear (Zulroics had a wierd in-between gear ilvl), but boo hoo. It made 4.3 very successful and allowed a lot of players to see DS via LFR who otherwise wouldn't have and allowed guilds who had struggled in past raids (particularly BWD and such) to move on and see new content without banging their heads against the same raids over and over. LFR had an inbetween ilvl too because it wasn't intended to really be an 'upgrade' for players, but just some rewards for people doing LFR. The gear was a minor upgrade over the 5man stuff and still subpar from the real raid stuff; except the weapons which were a real problem, but could have easily been solved, but weren't for who knows what reason.
This was excellent both for semi-active players, returning players, guilds, and players with a lot of alts. Most people who were active had a main (or two) that they already had kept current through every tier, so getting to the new stuff wasn't an issue. But for returning players, newly raiding players, atls etc, having catch ups let you actually play your alts with current content quickly and (relatively) easily. It benefited many and hurt literally no one (that mattered, people who worry more about their epeen than anyone else don't matter, sorry!)
Now...we're back to dev's saying, no, lets not allow players to quickly and easily get to current content, but instead make them always trudge through all the old stuff over and over, no matter how many times they've done it on mains, alts, or whatever; because hey, some people are really sensitive about other people having shit even almost as good as them, and they matter :rotate:
I think their ridiculous reasoning is a ruse, though. From their perspective, Cataclysm had the problem of people gearing up and finishing "too early" and quitting between patches or getting bored and moving to different games. Stuff like slow VP gains and linear progression is them prolonging the process to hopefully keep people snared.
Here's a thought, and of course, I know the answer already would be, "we don't have the time/manpower to do it."
Achievements and a lot of rewards are now cross-faction and account-wide, and GC argues that giving this stuff to alts discourages play. So start doing things to encourage alts. Class achievements, profession achievments, things from professions that are account-bound. How about putting in some class-specific quests and such...no, new hunter pets do not fucking count. Bring back the druid/shaman quests.
Make players want to have all the crafting professions maxed. Make it so leveling a new class isn't just pushing hotkeys in a different order. Have some significant differences between the factions when questing. As it is, outside of the start of Twilight Highlands and Jade Forest, is there really any difference between Alliance and Horde questing from 80-90?
LFR was supposed to be a way for casual players to see the content. Now it has become it's own progression path, and one that is slow enough that truly casual players won't have the gear for the next tier when it's released.
Make players want to have all the crafting professions maxed.
I love it. Make each profession able to make a BoA item at 600. Combine all the items into a unique mount. (A flying mount that can carry 3-4 other players? *Drool*) That right there would keep me grinding alts for a little while.
http://www.danreviewstheworld.com
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan
I think the move to put stuff back in old content was a good one; the raid pets and whatnot. Getting to them is usually trivial but it's something fun to do and reminds people they're there. Since 5.1 I've seen more LFG's for random raids that otherwise I hadn't seen ever, stuff without the pets, because I think just throwing people in MC or Naxx again get it back on their mind and they think "oh hey, I have a bunch of achievements in here I never got, I wonder if anyone else wants to do it too", and so they make a group. You only need a handful of people too, usually, and it gets people doing things, and doing different things.
Having the achievements be shared account wide, and pets etc, makes that stuff even more desirable because you're not locked into doing it on your main. If you're passing through SW on your alt and see a "LFM Sarth 3D open rolls on mount" you don't think "oh, I need to get my main to do that", you just think "oh, I should do that" because you just share the mount, and achievements. Win/win. You know if you level an alt you have access to stuff you've already earned and don't have to trudge through, say, the raid meta's to get the mount all over again. So out of the gate you can play your alt how you want, and that's a good thing.
Alts are something they should be pushing harder, and making things more accessible to alts are what is going to be the key to getting players to stick around. Account based stuff is a big deal and if anything they should be doubling down on it. Figure the fucking cross realm mail out, don't make players feel 'stuck' on a server if they ever want to branch out. Give us account currencies, reps, gold for the same reasons. Doing shit like grinding Cenarion Expedition is not fun. But if you want a pattern on that alt, gotta do it all over again! Why? Let me get my pattern and let me take that alt into <raid> to get that transmog set I wanted for them, or into PvP because I like pvping on <class> instead of <otherclass>.
yes, making more things account bound means less implicit grinding on alts, but, I've said before, there is so much content in the game now, instead of trying to make us do golden lotus for the 4th time, give us a compelling reason to go back and do that content. Transmog helped. raid pets help. Keep that going, down that road; not dumb shit like hiding rep grinds behind rep grinds or linear progression.
Oh, one other thought. During Cata, didn't the crafted PVP gear recipes get upgraded to make higher ilvl gear? I can't remember how much, though, or if it happened more than once. So in 5.2, instead of 450 blues, those could be...463? Maybe even 476? Eh, probably not that high.
Oh, one other thought. During Cata, didn't the crafted PVP gear recipes get upgraded to make higher ilvl gear? I can't remember how much, though, or if it happened more than once. So in 5.2, instead of 450 blues, those could be...463? Maybe even 476? Eh, probably not that high.
They did, they were like 333 off the bat, 350 with the zulroic patch and then 377 with 4.3. Numbers may not be exact; except they for sure ended up at 377.
Already crafted items kept their ilvl, but your recipe automatically upgraded.
And yes, it worked very well; though due to itemization issues it sometimes was a headache in LFD if you got a party of people in all pvp gear...not an issue anymore! I really hope we'll see that in MoP, but given so many other bad things, I won't be surprised off that 450 crafted gear is still 450 all the way through MoP.
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
And that is an honest question btw ...
It's not really a problem now, but it's something that can certainly become a problem later. I can't help but think we're drifting towards Vanilla style raid progression...and that's not something I have any desire to see again. I played both sides of the game then; casually raiding twice a week, and raiding 5 days a week and competing for server firsts. The way the progression was structured sucked equally for both types of guilds, and I don't really care to see a repeat of it.
The solution is staring you all in the face, and I see it in every LFR - grind honor for poorly itemized PVP gear to skate past the level limits! PROBLEM SOLVED!
I think the move to put stuff back in old content was a good one; the raid pets and whatnot. Getting to them is usually trivial but it's something fun to do and reminds people they're there. Since 5.1 I've seen more LFG's for random raids that otherwise I hadn't seen ever, stuff without the pets, because I think just throwing people in MC or Naxx again get it back on their mind and they think "oh hey, I have a bunch of achievements in here I never got, I wonder if anyone else wants to do it too", and so they make a group. You only need a handful of people too, usually, and it gets people doing things, and doing different things.
Having the achievements be shared account wide, and pets etc, makes that stuff even more desirable because you're not locked into doing it on your main. If you're passing through SW on your alt and see a "LFM Sarth 3D open rolls on mount" you don't think "oh, I need to get my main to do that", you just think "oh, I should do that" because you just share the mount, and achievements. Win/win. You know if you level an alt you have access to stuff you've already earned and don't have to trudge through, say, the raid meta's to get the mount all over again. So out of the gate you can play your alt how you want, and that's a good thing.
Alts are something they should be pushing harder, and making things more accessible to alts are what is going to be the key to getting players to stick around. Account based stuff is a big deal and if anything they should be doubling down on it. Figure the fucking cross realm mail out, don't make players feel 'stuck' on a server if they ever want to branch out. Give us account currencies, reps, gold for the same reasons. Doing shit like grinding Cenarion Expedition is not fun. But if you want a pattern on that alt, gotta do it all over again! Why? Let me get my pattern and let me take that alt into <raid> to get that transmog set I wanted for them, or into PvP because I like pvping on <class> instead of <otherclass>.
yes, making more things account bound means less implicit grinding on alts, but, I've said before, there is so much content in the game now, instead of trying to make us do golden lotus for the 4th time, give us a compelling reason to go back and do that content. Transmog helped. raid pets help. Keep that going, down that road; not dumb shit like hiding rep grinds behind rep grinds or linear progression.
I completely agree. I played back in the beta and for the first 2 years. Very spotty since then. I have seen Onyxia once back then, and I think Ragnaros once. I killed Rag the second time a couple of weeks ago. I have done ZG 20, AQ 20 and that is it. I have done no other raids. ever. Now I have the chance and can even solo most of the old stuff. And it is awesome. You are right, Blizzard should push more in that direction.
I wouldn't mind seeing them re-tweak those old raids with new loot a la Naxx. Make 'em LFR only or something. Also, el oh el at seeing people putting together TBC era raids and asking for AT LEAST two healers.
I completely agree. I played back in the beta and for the first 2 years. Very spotty since then. I have seen Onyxia once back then, and I think Ragnaros once. I killed Rag the second time a couple of weeks ago. I have done ZG 20, AQ 20 and that is it. I have done no other raids. ever. Now I have the chance and can even solo most of the old stuff. And it is awesome. You are right, Blizzard should push more in that direction.
My "guild" (3 people) is going through WotLK and getting all the guild achievements in the dungeons. It's easy and quick, but it's the most fun we've had playing together in a long time.
http://www.danreviewstheworld.com
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan
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think their minds are pretty set on this at this point
I'll just stand there and be the guy that tells "told you so"
The 'best' part about it is; I'm sure they have an astounding amount of numbers they can look at, all sorts of internal metrics we can't even imagine; what players were doing in general before they unsubbed, play cycles, styles, etc.
For all that, the lesson they apparently came away with from the incredible popularity of WotLK, particularly Tournament on, and then the soul crushing difficulty for many players of the Cata heroics and the intital cata raids, leading to a massive drop off right out of the gate that they never recovered from, even if they appeared to learn their lessons with a lot of good content with the Hyjal stuff and 4.3...
The lesson they learned is that the epeens of a few players are so fucking important that you have to take away a lot of accessability and easy of access to content for the vast vast majority of players, in order to make those few happy.
Oh, and by the way, even if they weren't actually complaining about it, to boot.
Glorious
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I see it like this: The kind of player that gets butthurt over that sort of thing may unsub, but they'll probably come back when there's a new tier. And since they're already geared, they can jump right in. But the player that burns out over having to grind up alts..or even a main that starts late in the expansion...might just say "screw this" and find something else to do with their time. And once they feel a character has fallen too far behind to catch up, it's probably getting shelved.
Of course, as always, they over-corrected and are making everything such a chore that it's just driving people away entirely.
The proper thing to do would have been to encourage alts if you wanted to maintain your more casual subscriber base. They don't care about crossing the finish line first in the raid rush, they just want something to do that doesn't feel like a chore.
Edit: Though the epeen whiners do whine the loudest, so perhaps they try to keep them somewhat sated to quiet them from generating negative word of mouth or whatever. A dude yelling from the rooftops about the game being dumbed down and terrible could dissuade a few new users from checking it out after all.
How about, oh idk, the box of gold you get also has VP that can go over the 1000 cap per week? It can be something trivial like 50, but enough that you can buy a piece after a week of shit luck.
Or if they want to cling to RNG: Box of gold has an additional item that can be turned into Elder Charms. I'll call it a Zen Charm. 5 Zen Charms = 1 Elder Charm with no particular cap per week. (other than being throttled by # of boss rolls)
These are just 2 ideas I pulled out of my ass in 45 seconds.
Is that how you design systems now? Wishes and prayers?
How about, I dunno, instead of wishing for a fix...they produce a fix.
Shocking thought, I know. Just throwing it out there.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Wish indeed
I see this said a lot, and I wish I could believe it.
The problem is, even when it feels like "no, he couldn't mean that, I'll just blame it on the character limit", actual implementation of things so far in MoP have been pretty much as stated in the tweets.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Person doesn't get loot, put some way to get loot in the gold box. The guy that got something doesn't get both, so it can't be exploited. How is this hard?
Or how about a progressive drop system for LFR alone, like they already have for quest drops.
There's no real way to exploit it, if you get loot, the progression drops back to zero, if you don't get loot, it ramps up until you get something. But you still have a chance either way.
Make the progression per boss, so you can't just go through all of, say MSV, hoping to get nothing, then jump in Terrace for a better chance at loot. Each boss has it's own progressive ramp up that don't apply to other boss drops.
There's no reasons someone (me...) should walk away from the same boss empty handed with two loot chances every single week, ever, over and over.
With LFD catchups, a boss doesn't drop what you want? You requeue and try again. Someone takes your drop? Irritating, but reqeue.
LFR? No drops? Better luck next week, and better hope you get something then, or another week.
Since drops are now per player and not raid wide, there's no reason they couldn't do something like this, it'd make a lot of players happy and since something they need to fucking remember, LFR isn't for progression, there's no real risk to imbalancing actual progression by giving players what they've been working for legitimately. You have to put in the time, why keep saying "well, it's too damn bad, wish we could help!"?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Make X = 30-34 depending on how often you feel 1 piece of loot should be awarded per LFR week
http://t.co/1uapOE6F
Apparently they also have no control over the diminishing returns system. They just have to make sacrifices and worship at the game design god altar and hope he casts a benevolent gaze upon the puny, mortal WoW code.
ಠ_ಠ
Who the fuck wants VPs to come in even slower than they already do? Blizzard is actually listening to players like this? How many weeks (hint: in the context of video games, a week is not a short period of time) do they think it should take to get one item or upgrade one item slightly?
I agree with you on the implementation part, but the kind of shit he answers with these wishywashy replies should be addressed in a developer blog or something, not in a tweet.
Regardless its very depressing and doesn't make me inclined to start playing again.
I get it, they're afraid of disturbing the playerbase, particularly pvp'ers with big changes at once. But it feels like they've been decrying the instant CC/AoE stuff in PvP for ages but just keep doing more.
But the irony of the fear of disturbing the playerbase is uh...linear progression?
I won't be at all surprised if there's a huge dropoff in sub numbers after 5.2.
See, we are following these tweets and interviews and blue posts. Most casual players? Nope. So when 5.2 rolls around and your average player can't figure out where the new dungeons are, asking constantly in /2, and then can't figure out why they can't queue for the new LFR's because, what average player is going to have ilvl 486, they get fed up and leave.
I wonder then, how the dev's will react. More "Man, I wish we could do something about this"?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
They should post the data that's supposedly telling them this so that the players can arrive at a similar conclusion on their own.
One of the neat things about Squenix is that once a year they'll post a HUGE collection of pie charts and graphs that show you what the playerbase is doing in both of their online FF games. Sure, the info is hardly exhaustive. But there's enough there to give some general ideas of what the players are doing. Similarly, Blizzard doesn't need to provide every last scrap of data on player activities. But if they've got access to data that suggests players don't want what "catch-up progression", then they should post enough data to suggest that such a counter-intuitive idea might actually be true.
I love the XI Census data. I don't really have anything to add other than that. It fascinates me. I just like looking at all the numbers on job diversity, what jobs are using what merits etc.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
So apparently it's OK for people to be pigeonholed into activities, but only the activities that the devs deem appropriate.
I've been with WoW since the open beta, and not let my account lapse at all over that time.
Unless 5.2 comes out and absolutely blows me away in every aspect of the gameplay (sans pvp because I just do not care about that anymore), I will not make it to 5.3. But I may glance towards it at 6.0.
Eight weeks and running!
I think they need to burn some more incense or wish a little harder or whatever they fuck they plan on doing to make a not completely horseshit loot system for LFR.
Maybe my DK will have better luck (olol), I've been having more fun with him lately anyway.
While I'm on the topic of the shit loot system in LFR, I just want to go back to something Blizzard said awhile back re: the new loot system. They'd rather players be mad at the game than at other players.
Are they fucking stupid?
They....do want money right? Players you can put on ignore, actively ignore, probably won't ever see again anyway (in the case of BG's or LFR/LFD). The game? That's what we pay for. The one thing of all the things about WoW the devs should actively want players to not hate is the game itself. What kind of fucking moron decided it would be better for a player to be furious at the game, and probably just outright quit playing, than be pissed at another player; that will fade quickly and you'll move on?
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
So WoW is a cake right?
It's a cake that has shit in the center. Good, quality, high fiber shit. The rest of the cake is delicious. This has always been the case. You just eat the good cake and avoid the shit. You know where the shit is, it's no secret, there's no surprise shit; but in the past the shit had icing on it so that even though you knew "Thar be Shite!", you didn't have it staring you in the face. Previous expansion packs have worked hard to increase the delicious cake:shit ratio so there was less and less shit to try to hide.
But along comes MoP and somewhere along the line the chefs learned that, wow, there's actually a population of players that actually enjoy the shit part, more than the rest of the cake. Sure, it's only a very very small minority, but fewer people were eating their cake last time around, so maybe this time, lets take the icing off the shit, so you have to stare at it all the time, and increase the amount of shit again! And hey, since there are players who like the shit, lets put little pockets of shit throughout the rest of the otherwise tasty cake, because those players who enjoy the shit should be able to have their shit all the time! Sure, it's harder for most of the cake lovers to avoid shit this time around, but we have to please the people who truely love a well placed dump!
And here we are. With our spotted shit cake. There's still a lot of tasty cake to be had, and in fact as I've posted every bitch this morning I've been partaking of the tasty part.
But then I got a bite of surprise shit.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Maybe I am not getting the whole problem, but isn't linear progression already in place? Once I ding 90, I don't have the ilvl to go to heroics, let alone do LFR. What is the difference between that and 5.2?
And that is an honest question btw ...
The VP cap is....whatever. My problem with VP in MoP isn't the lower cap, it's the lower gain. Yes, wonderful, there are more ways to earn VP; but how it was in 4.3 worked well. You could run both LFR's and like 4 LFD's and cap it on a character. It wasn't a trivial amount of time it'd take but it wasn't unbearable either. Now, you can run five LFR's and not even be halfway to the cap; and then if you want to finish it up via LFD, hope you don't want to do it in one day! I loved when GC tried to say that it was less of a chore to log on every day and run a dungeon for the same amount of VP, instead of being able to earn it when you have some free time on your own terms. The lack of logic was astounding and I'm still feeling that seismic shift in thinking today.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It has to do with old raids becoming obsolete when new raids are released. Gearing up will be difficult when you have to run old raids to gear up in order to run new raids, because no one will want to run older content and go through the same thing again just to gear up alts. In the past there were ways of bridging the gap without through five mans and JP vendors absorbing previous tiers VP items, but neither of those seem to be options, this time.
EDIT: I mean, look at dungeon/LFR queues now. 25-50 minute queues for Terrace LFR. That's not going to improve when NEW content is released
but the real problem is what that does to guilds.
let's say there are 3 top-end guilds on your server. one guild's tank quits/leaves for another guild. with quick catch up mechanisms, someone can start playing an alt painlessly, and there's a much larger pool of potential recruits.
without catch-up, your choices become: poach someone from another guild (leaving that guild in the same situation you're in now) or perpetually run old content to gear up new alts/recruits, halting progression. this is what the raid scene was like in vanilla/tbc.
Linear progression isn't a problem at the top of an Xpack, and never has been.
It's 4 patches and three tiers later.
On an individual players level, say you get a new class to 90 in patch 5.4. Three tiers in. If you want to get that character into current content you'll have to
1) Run LFD till you get to 460+
2)Run MSV LFR till you get to 470+
3)Run HoF/Terrace LFR till you get 486+ (hint, nothing in those LFR's has ilvl above 483, so hope you bought some VP gear to up it even more)
4)Run 5.2 LFR's (4 of them) until you get ilvl <insert number>
5)????
6)Profit! You can now enter the most current LFR!
Doesn't sound so bad, when you read it right there, right? Well, LFR has a weekly lockout. That first week in MSV, don't get any loot at all, which is entirely possible and likely? Not high enough ilvl to get into the other LFR's so 3) is pushed back another week. Next week, maybe you eek out a 470 and start running the 3 483 LFR's. Since you need 486 (currently) to get into 5.2 LFR's plan on being there for a long time (I just passed 486 on my pally, running everything every week since they've been released, it is now Janurary...LFR started in October iirc).
So before you get to step 6 you're looking at, easily, months of old and outdated LFR's. Likely with much higher queue times since they won't be the only thing for players to run on their mains.
Just to see current content. You could easily be barely high enough ilvl to se 5.4 content by the time 6.0 comes out. I'm not even exaggerating. Alternately you could have fucking insane luck and get there in a few weeks. But the latter is pretty unlikely.
On "mains" you're probably running stuff as it comes out, so it's not as huge of a deal, you'll be progressing normally anyway. The issue isn't with mains (for active players anyway, more on that in a sec), but with alts.
And this is just from an individual perspective.
So lets go with individuals who aren't active players. Maybe they take time off for awhile. They played at launch of MoP had fun, but shelved it for awhile and decide to come back in 5.4. See that above? Can you imagine telling someone who wants to replay the game for fun that, oh, by the way, you have to do this old stuff for months before you can play current content with everyone else, your guild mates and your friends. Have fun! See you in the fall!
Yeah. Terrible design. Astoundingly terrible.
Now from a guilds perspective. Lets say they got a new recruit, invited a new raider to the group, or need a specific class alt for progression.
They have to either 1) all of the above sitting on their thumbs waiting for said player to get geared to current content or 2) make their active raiders go back and re-raid all of the old raids over and over again until said player has gear sufficent to do the current content. This isn't fair to the active raiders by any means and it would quickly burn out pretty much any normal raid group and kill their desire to do the new stuff; plus you're putting off how long said guild can even start new content because they're waiting for said player.
So from the guilds perspective you're potentially holding an entire guild back to get even one player up to speed because of an asinine gear system.
They have done this. They did it in Vanilla and most of TBC. It was terrible. So terrible that blizzard has said on mulitiple occasions how terrible it was, and have actively moved far far away from it because it was so bad.
So they gave us the catch up system. Started a bit in TBC with tokens for gear from Heroics and stuff, but went all in with WotLK with each major tier (outside of Ulduar) having a catch up 5 man(s) that players could get quickly up to speed to do whatever. It wasn't as good as raid gear and was often itemized decently, at best, but it was sufficent.
And this carried through all of WotLK and all of Cata, with the ICC 5mans, ZA/ZG, End of Time 5mans. Every major patch had an 'in between' catch up system that gave you gear on par with the previous tier of raiding so that you could get into the new stuff quickly and easily. This didn't disrupt raiding because old content was old, and they wanted players in the new stuff. I guess a few people got butthurt that the EoT 5mans had Firelands level gear (Zulroics had a wierd in-between gear ilvl), but boo hoo. It made 4.3 very successful and allowed a lot of players to see DS via LFR who otherwise wouldn't have and allowed guilds who had struggled in past raids (particularly BWD and such) to move on and see new content without banging their heads against the same raids over and over. LFR had an inbetween ilvl too because it wasn't intended to really be an 'upgrade' for players, but just some rewards for people doing LFR. The gear was a minor upgrade over the 5man stuff and still subpar from the real raid stuff; except the weapons which were a real problem, but could have easily been solved, but weren't for who knows what reason.
This was excellent both for semi-active players, returning players, guilds, and players with a lot of alts. Most people who were active had a main (or two) that they already had kept current through every tier, so getting to the new stuff wasn't an issue. But for returning players, newly raiding players, atls etc, having catch ups let you actually play your alts with current content quickly and (relatively) easily. It benefited many and hurt literally no one (that mattered, people who worry more about their epeen than anyone else don't matter, sorry!)
Now...we're back to dev's saying, no, lets not allow players to quickly and easily get to current content, but instead make them always trudge through all the old stuff over and over, no matter how many times they've done it on mains, alts, or whatever; because hey, some people are really sensitive about other people having shit even almost as good as them, and they matter :rotate:
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Achievements and a lot of rewards are now cross-faction and account-wide, and GC argues that giving this stuff to alts discourages play. So start doing things to encourage alts. Class achievements, profession achievments, things from professions that are account-bound. How about putting in some class-specific quests and such...no, new hunter pets do not fucking count. Bring back the druid/shaman quests.
Make players want to have all the crafting professions maxed. Make it so leveling a new class isn't just pushing hotkeys in a different order. Have some significant differences between the factions when questing. As it is, outside of the start of Twilight Highlands and Jade Forest, is there really any difference between Alliance and Horde questing from 80-90?
I love it. Make each profession able to make a BoA item at 600. Combine all the items into a unique mount. (A flying mount that can carry 3-4 other players? *Drool*) That right there would keep me grinding alts for a little while.
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan
Having the achievements be shared account wide, and pets etc, makes that stuff even more desirable because you're not locked into doing it on your main. If you're passing through SW on your alt and see a "LFM Sarth 3D open rolls on mount" you don't think "oh, I need to get my main to do that", you just think "oh, I should do that" because you just share the mount, and achievements. Win/win. You know if you level an alt you have access to stuff you've already earned and don't have to trudge through, say, the raid meta's to get the mount all over again. So out of the gate you can play your alt how you want, and that's a good thing.
Alts are something they should be pushing harder, and making things more accessible to alts are what is going to be the key to getting players to stick around. Account based stuff is a big deal and if anything they should be doubling down on it. Figure the fucking cross realm mail out, don't make players feel 'stuck' on a server if they ever want to branch out. Give us account currencies, reps, gold for the same reasons. Doing shit like grinding Cenarion Expedition is not fun. But if you want a pattern on that alt, gotta do it all over again! Why? Let me get my pattern and let me take that alt into <raid> to get that transmog set I wanted for them, or into PvP because I like pvping on <class> instead of <otherclass>.
yes, making more things account bound means less implicit grinding on alts, but, I've said before, there is so much content in the game now, instead of trying to make us do golden lotus for the 4th time, give us a compelling reason to go back and do that content. Transmog helped. raid pets help. Keep that going, down that road; not dumb shit like hiding rep grinds behind rep grinds or linear progression.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
They did, they were like 333 off the bat, 350 with the zulroic patch and then 377 with 4.3. Numbers may not be exact; except they for sure ended up at 377.
Already crafted items kept their ilvl, but your recipe automatically upgraded.
And yes, it worked very well; though due to itemization issues it sometimes was a headache in LFD if you got a party of people in all pvp gear...not an issue anymore! I really hope we'll see that in MoP, but given so many other bad things, I won't be surprised off that 450 crafted gear is still 450 all the way through MoP.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It's not really a problem now, but it's something that can certainly become a problem later. I can't help but think we're drifting towards Vanilla style raid progression...and that's not something I have any desire to see again. I played both sides of the game then; casually raiding twice a week, and raiding 5 days a week and competing for server firsts. The way the progression was structured sucked equally for both types of guilds, and I don't really care to see a repeat of it.
I completely agree. I played back in the beta and for the first 2 years. Very spotty since then. I have seen Onyxia once back then, and I think Ragnaros once. I killed Rag the second time a couple of weeks ago. I have done ZG 20, AQ 20 and that is it. I have done no other raids. ever. Now I have the chance and can even solo most of the old stuff. And it is awesome. You are right, Blizzard should push more in that direction.
I wouldn't mind seeing them re-tweak those old raids with new loot a la Naxx. Make 'em LFR only or something. Also, el oh el at seeing people putting together TBC era raids and asking for AT LEAST two healers.
My "guild" (3 people) is going through WotLK and getting all the guild achievements in the dungeons. It's easy and quick, but it's the most fun we've had playing together in a long time.
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan