Blizz needs to rethink their design philosophy

Community General Discussion
1

I feel like blizzard is out of touch with what the community actually wants, and how to attract and retain players outside of the first 2 months of each patch. It seems a lot of people resub at each patch hoping things have changed, and realize very quickly that it’s the same design choices being made that led them to quit the previous tier. The game is being developed for the minority, rather than the majority. I’ll make a few examples here…

RAIDING:
It seems each tier they up the difficulty and coordination required to clear the content and design the raids where the large MAJORITY will never clear on mythic. Most guilds constantly have a revolving door of players each tier, and a lot can’t even field a roster to keep it going. It almost becomes more hassle than it’s worth at times. The mechanics in mythic are so complex at times that you literally fail and fail over and over purely because guilds have multiple raid members that take forever to grasp the mechanics and not wipe the raid constantly, and there’s not much that can be done about it for a typical guild because just getting enough people to show up to raid each week is hard enough.

You get max ilvl gear from the great vault for running +15s in m+, which very quickly devalues any gear you’re going to get from LFR/normal/heroic raid, outside maybe a trinket or something OP from the the raid. So now what you have is mythic raid gear being the only thing worth while a few weeks into a patch due to getting a max ilvl reward from the great vault each week. It then gets to a point where it’s “what’s the point of doing the raid on anything other than mythic” but than also the problem being that the large majority of the playerbase wont ever clear mythic anyways. At that point what is even the point of raiding anyways? What is the point of wiping for months of progression on mythic bosses that it is a high chance you won’t even kill that tier anyways. I mean, even trying to pug the raid is a nightmare, which is to be expected in an uncoordinated group, but a lot of people can’t commit to guild raid schedules and have no choice, but it’s almost to the point it’s just a waste of time. You attempt to pug a raid, and you are just going to end up frustrated and having your time wasted far more often than not.

TIMEGATING:
Don’t get me wrong, this patch is a step in the right direction with Zerith Mortis, but still far from perfect. When you timegate content or rewards behind chores, to the point where you have to log in every single day to do them, and feel like you are behind for missing a day, that’s not a good feeling. If you have to design your game with the goal of time gating people in order to keep subs active, you have simply failed at designing content that will just naturally keep the subs active.

Many players have lives outside of WoW, especially a community that is generally older than a lot of other game communities out there. There are some days where people can play 4+ hours or more, and other days where people can’t log on at all. It’s a bad feeling when you can’t just log on during a day that you have a lot of time to play, and get everything you need to get done for the week and not worry about it anymore, as opposed to knowing “I’m busy the next day or 2 and can’t play so I’m screwed now”.

A lot of these design elements just lead to natural burnout just from the requirements you put on people.

CHARACTER PROGRESSION:
MMOs are supposed to be built around character progression and having a character that you have invested in and connect with. This game forces you to play the meta each tier, otherwise getting into most content becomes a complete hassle. If you are a non meta spec, you can spend an hour just getting spam declined from mythic plus, which again just leads to saying screw it and logging off in frustration. If someone logs on as say a feral Druid and has an hour to play where it’s like “hey I have time to run a key”, you could very well spend an hour in queue without doing anything except getting declined.

You’re forced to give up on what you truly want to play, in order to play what is perceived as the meta, or simply struggle to even play the game. All people care about the couple weeks leading into each tier is “what’s going to be meta next season” or looking up “tier lists” in order to decide what they need to play, rather than identifying as a class and choosing what they “want” to play.

There needs to be more incentive to pick a character and stick with it long term and feel like you are rewarded for it, rather than being punished for it. If you are a fotm reroller, you have a significant advantage over someone that isn’t, even if that “feral main” is actually 10x the player the fotm reroller is.

EACH SEASON/PATCH:
Every season/patch is just getting the same formula… a new raid which the majority won’t complete…. A new m+ season grinding for the same gear and IO that you already achieved the previous season, all for a recoloured skin of the same mount you already have… a new zone to do your daily timegated chores in that really not many people find fun and engaging…. You have a great vault system that besides the first couple weeks usually always leads to a Tuesday reset disappointment.

This has been the formula for 3 expansions now, and it appears each tier less and less people are retained. Might be time to start thinking outside of the box and design your content around the majority rather than the minority.

Don’t get me wrong I love challenging content (mainly m+), I’m 2700 IO through purely pugging keys. I really only play the game for m+ as I can’t commit to a raid schedule, and despise logging on to do my “chores” each day and spending 30-45 mins doing stuff I don’t wanna do before I can actually jump into keys.

Like why can’t there be more added into patches that are actually fun to do casually when you want to turn your brain off from the constant esports level content that this game is designed around.

Look at games like Lost Ark for example, you are rewarded for all activities you do whether it’s gear or materials to upgrade your gear. It always feels like your time is at least attempting to be rewarded. Look at WoW, you can clear all 11 bosses in raid and not even get an item. You can run 2-3 mythic plus dungeons in a row and actually get nothing. Like it’s just disappointment and time being wasted far more often than not it seems. All these systems that blizz seems to love to make life difficult for everyone, yet they can’t design a system that rewards you at least something for investing hours into completing content to get nothing out of it.

Every expansion the first 2 patches make everything a hassle where everyone complains about quality of life changes that would make it infinitely better, yet we always have to wait until the last patch of the xpac before they listen. Again, just to drag out content and have a carrot to dangle to keep the subs active. Like start actually designing the game for the people, rather than for the mentality of making things take as long as possible while not being fun

12 Likes
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None of this is new. Every expansion it’s the same way. The player community gives feedback and Blizzard says, you think you do, but you don’t! Here’s more game content with game design that you none of you asked for. Enjoy!

5 Likes
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I agree with a few things you’ve said. This is just a small list of things I thought should be pointed out or discussed.

So you want it dumbed down?

Do we have statistics on this? Honestly just curious. I don’t know what most raiding guilds go through these days. The raiding guilds I know have been around forever so they’re pretty darn stable. But they’re also not everyone.

Then perhaps those players shouldn’t be in Mythic.

Not everyone runs M+ and not all Normal raiders are in +15s. And there’s probably even less LFR players in +15s.

Again, not everyone is running +15s.

Because some people enjoy it. Not everyone wants to mindlessly roflstomp raids.

Then that’s life, not Blizzard’s fault. There are enough other things to do than Mythic raiding.

I disagree. I had more fun in Korthia and other end game zones than ZM.

You’re not screwed. You have a belt until you get the memory. That’s perfectly usable all the way up to +18 from what I’ve seen from people and their profiles.

No it doesn’t. Play whatever you want. rIO seems to show all classes and specs represented. Push your own keys and the crazy people who obsess over the 1% can’t keep you out.

Literally no one is being punished.

You don’t speak for me or others.

I thought that getting currencies, gear, transmogs, mounts, pets, etc were all rewards? So is having fun with a group of friends. I don’t need to constantly be handed a cookie for every little thing I do to have fun. I also enjoy the time I spend with people in this game. That’s one of the great things about team challenges in MMORPGs. Rewards are great, but when they shove seven thousand recolors of things at you in convoluted ways, it stops being fun.

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If you can’t hack mythic, don’t do mythic but don’t try and ruin it for the people who enjoy it for its difficulty for the sake of pleasing people who don’t want to get sweaty. There’s already LFR, normal and heroic for them.

2 Likes
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I feel like GD is out of touch with how game design actually works and the necessary balance between product and profit.

It seems a lot of people resub at each patch, play, complete what they want to in it and then unsub to pursue other entertainment… like healthy people.

Really?

Have you even looked at the available content?

For everyone:

  1. Role-Playing
  2. Questing: base game
  3. Questing: end game (ie attunements, campaigns)
  4. Questing: repeat dailies/weeklies (typically for reputation)
  5. Professions: gathering
  6. Professions: crafting
  7. Collecting: toys
  8. Collecting: mounts
  9. Collecting: appearances
  10. Gold gathering/playing the auction house
  11. Transmogging
  12. Pet Battles
  13. Achievements
  14. Dungeons: normal
  15. Dungeons: heroic
  16. Dungeons: mythic
  17. Dungeons: mythic+ up to 15
  18. Raid: LFR
  19. Raid: normal
  20. Raid: heroic
  21. PvP: open world, duels, skirmishes, ect (apologies to PvP players for poor presentation, I just don’t know enough to further categorize)

And then there are World Events, Expansion features (ie treasure hunting in Draenor) and Timewalking which do not fit neatly into any of these categories.

For top players:

  1. Dungeons: 16 and up Mythic+
  2. Raids: Mythic
  3. PvP: Top rated

So clearly the majority of the game is being developed for everyone.

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they already acknowledged that their mindset has been set up a certain way and they have plans to change it, however as you know change comes slowly, or not at all, it’s not going to be immediate.

HOWEVER… considering how communicative they have been as of late leads me to believe that they are somewhat sincere with that claim, i mean even their most recent action with planning a 4th season is totally different from what they would normally do during an expansion’s lull in content.

so i know it’s a pain the butt, yet i firmly believe that it’s going to get better, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but i believe that it will happen.

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only a few idiot want to run the same thing over and over IE mythic dungeons… most do it in hopes. problem is the rng morons fook em to death.

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What is “ruining it for the people who enjoy it”? Is it continuing to raid even though everybody knows you’re a slow learner, or is it quitting and leaving them short-handed so they can’t raid at all?

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When you are designing content that the majority of the playerbase doesn’t stand a chance of completing and that’s one of the biggest selling points of each patch, it’s probably not going to work for keeping players engaged. For example, I ran all +15s week 1 of this patch which guaranteed me 3 choices of 278 gear and that’s in a pug situation. Week 1 I can get mythic level gear, yet the average guild doesn’t even stand a chance of downing mythic bosses for weeks for that same equivalent. Why would I raid and spend weeks progressing the raid when I can just pug a +15 key the first week and avoid the headache and be rewarded better for my time

The problem is they are though. They are there to fill a slot because a lot of guilds barely have enough players that show up every week. If you aren’t an established cutting edge guild it’s natural that you will have a revolving door of at least part of your roster when you plateau and those players want to either move onto a guild that can finish the rest of the raid, or those players will lose interest and call it quits for the tier. There’s raiders that are loyal to their guild, and there’s raiders that wanna parse and constantly move up the chain

My point exactly than lol. If you are a LFR/normal raider, you could simply run any key level for your vault to get higher ilvl than you could from normal or LFR. I mean all you need to do is a +10 key during the week to get heroic raid equivalent gear. There is no chance running a +10 is on par with heroic raiding atm Lmfao.

That’s fine lol, that’s your opinion, but you can literally see from the general feedback on these forums that most prefer the 30 mins a day in ZM as opposed to the endless grind of korthia.

As someone who has purely pugged keys for 3 expansions in a row now, this is just so clearly wrong and out of touch. Please try pugging your way to +20 portals as a shadow priest vs doing it as a meta spec like mage/rogue and report the difference to me. Then after seeing that difference tell me that you would rather take the hard route every season as opposed to the auto invites as meta. Sure it CAN be done as any spec, but after multiple seasons of doing it as a non meta spec and spending an hour getting declined between keys, you will eventually cave and make the switch. Now if you are running sub +20s, than it doesn’t matter, but if you’re playing m+ as your main mode of play, than non meta is a burden

Do you even play the game? You can literally spend 40 minutes in an m+ dungeon and your only reward is a couple of Anima lmao. You can spend an entire night/week in raid and not even get a piece of gear. As far as transmogs and achievement hunting goes, and this is my opinion, but I don’t pay $15 a month to 1 shot old content that is now irrelevant because there’s nothing else to actually do in current content, so when realistically the only content they release involves raiding, or doing m+, at least reward people somehow for the time it takes with literally anything other than a reminder that they just wasted their time constantly

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how can you say that when you have to gamble all your ressources you farmed for few hours , on 10% of success rate

yes you are perfectly describing Lost Ark , time-gating the content behind ilvl and only the whales p2w players can do it

this is better than wow for suree

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And that’s worse than literally getting absolutely nothing from content in WoW more often than not in that same “few hours” of running content

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It’s making a thread where you say it’s too hard and they should dumb it down.

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Lol you are posting on a character that isn’t even 200 ilvl, raided, or even done a key yet this season, acting like an elitist that cares whether the raid is made easier or not as if you ever even step foot into actual content anyways. Some people are just wild

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Shadowlands sucks, take it up with Blizzard.

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There is a lot of chatter on Twitter lately that Normal this tier is way over tuned and it’s super frustrating for people who like that pace of content.

1 Like
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And that’s a very legitimate gripe that I entirely understand being frustrated about, however he was specifically talking about mythic.

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They need to start designing the game like it was before. Everything they’ve done the past few years continues to miss what mmorpgs are supposed to be and degenerate the genre further and further

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With the news of season 4 it does seem like they are rethinking things and trying things out though.

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But not in the right way IMHO

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Maybe, maybe not. It’s too soon to say and we don’t know everything yet.

I will say this, for the most part since Legion they have stuck to a formula but the quality in my opinion, has only gone down since then.

They need to look back and see what worked and what didn’t and go from there. Sure, it may not be the right way every time for everybody but I’m actually glad to see they are trying things instead of doing nothing and leaving us in a real content drought.