DF abandons WoW’s solo playerbase... but why?

[Kissmytotems-proudmoore (Kissmytotems)]

Imagine a game with actual solo instanced progression why can’t we cause all endgamers will whine I am forced to do it while many of them are only doing content that requires nothing but what you do now. Wow is so full of people who think there forced to do everything from AP to titanforging omg I can’t stop I didn’t get max titanforging but I only do subpar content and no matter what gear I got in reality I’ll never clear nothing without massive nerfs

[Critswalkin-cenarius (Critswalkin)]

@Qaccy-baelgun

The thing is, pretty much nobody is able to provide a decent reason for why allowing solo progression to go further than it currently does is a bad idea.

I’ll give you a couple reasons why. Solo content can never be as challenging as group content for a multitude of reasons.

1. Anything you find challenging about a solo encounter can be made more difficult in a group setting simply by requiring more than 1 player to do it at the same time. And then there’s opportunities for actual coordination that exist in group content but not solo such as soccer boss from Ny’alotha, bomb hand offs from mythic crab boss in Sepulcher, etc. And to use a 5 man example: the last boss of Mechagon on hardmode essentially required voice coms to enter the code fast enough.
2. The Mage Tower was probably the hardest solo content ever put in the game. This required a huge amount of development time and testing because there were 36 specs at the time and now 38. The devs had to balance a handful of challenges amongst those specs so that each specs toolkit worked within the parameters of the challenge, etc. And you know what? There was still a huge disparity in difficulty. Certain specs had much better tools for their challenge than others. Can you imagine the outcry if the mage tower had awarded gear and not just a cosmetic appearance? For the devs to try doing a mage tower more frequently means the difficulty disparity would only grow because they probably would have to force more specs into fewer challenges.

[Donerick-stormrage]

@Critswalkin-cenarius

This required a huge amount of development time and testing because there were 36 specs at the time and now 38.

It’s a good thing they said they planned on hiring a couple thousand new developers a few years ago

[Snozzy-thrall]

@Qaccy-baelgun

I dunno how you’re missing all the threads about ‘overtuned’ raids and M+ dungeons, but it sounds like ‘your people’

Because they dont exist?

@Qaccy-baelgun

But you seem to be cut from the same cloth as Raiimir, AKA can’t really have a discussion since you’ve got an attitude problem,

I dont have an atitude problem. Sadly most people yourself included seem to have a common sense problem though.

@Qaccy-baelgun

o I won’t be replying to you any further than this.

Yeah I wouldnt want to take an obvious L either if I knew I was going to get refuted at every point like you would be.

[Snozzy-thrall]

@Kissmytotems-proudmoore

Imagine a game with actual solo instanced progression why can’t

They do, Its called an RPG. Skyrim is a great one for example.

@Kissmytotems-proudmoore

we cause all endgamers will whine I am forced to do it while many of them are only doing content that requires nothing but what you do now. Wow is so full of people who think there forced to do everything from AP to titanforging omg

Tell me you have never played on a competitive sports team or understand what is required to maintain a raid spot without tellling me.

[Lucavitha-area-52]

@Qaccy-baelgun

Me personally, I avoid group content as much as possible because the community who regularly engages with it makes it abundantly clear that I want nothing to do with it. I have plenty of fun with the game without it because WoW has so much to do. The thing is, pretty much nobody is able to provide a decent reason for why allowing solo progression to go further than it currently does is a bad idea. Still waiting for that. And no, ‘because solo players would complain about how hard it is’ is not a good reason. As I alluded to above, challenging group content is complained about as well. If that’s not a good reason to stop providing it, then difficulty isn’t a good reason to avoid adding solo challenges either.

Couple of points:

1. First off, I would suggest getting into a guild of like minded individuals so that you can collectively engage in group content. This doesn’t have to mean Progging or getting KSM, but just seeing what you and your friends can accomplish together.
2. Again: there have been attempts made at including challenging content for WoW in single player format and players have made it very clear that they don’t want it; MT and Visions were met with endless complaints of being too hard because they actually challenged players to utilize their full kit and work within mechanical constraints of similar difficulty to what you would see in M+ and raiding.

[Critswalkin-cenarius (Critswalkin)]

@Donerick-stormrage

It’s a good thing they said they planned on hiring a couple thousand new developers a few years ago

This is true. And the first thing blizzard will/has done is look at the participation rates in the Mage Tower and the demographics of those participating. If the majority were just raiders/M+ players then is developing more solo encounters like the mage tower really giving solo players more content? I think there is a reason the next 2 iterations of the mage tower scaled from 1-5 players. And most raiders and M+ players would rather just have more dungeons and raids added more frequently than to add a bunch of solo encounters.

[Lucavitha-area-52]

I think the other thing to keep in mind with designing challenging and rewarding single player content is that it would likely cause serious harm to the game’s class balance.

Like let’s think about this without putting any real ego or class favourtism into play and be objective.

First off, people would gravitate towards the classes that have the strongest independant survivability and damage output, so you’d see a massive influx of warlocks and hunters (due to their pets being pocket tanks and/or sacrifical goats), probably followed by classes with strong self healing abiltiies (Paladin, Shaman, Druid) with others having a harder time (rogue, DK, Warrior, Mage, priest).

This content balance shift would also negatively impact Tanks (who are likely to not be able to handle the damage output requirements) and Healers (who would really struggle in this new DPS centric content) which would also wind up having seriously screwy effects on group content as tanks and healers would be functioning at a serious gear disparity to the DPS, thus forcing the Devs to try and figure out how to rejig Raids and M+ to work around this new Solo meta.

[Cäpslöck-proudmoore]

@Tovi-moon-guard

@Snozzy-thrall

Also numbers that Capslock shared showed that 70% of the playerbase has raid achievements from vault.

Don’t you get vault rewards from LFR too…?

You do get the achievements from LFR, but let’s remember the full scope of the stats: The lower bound on raid participation (including LFR), is 66%.

The lower bound on M0 participation is 78%

These are lower bounds, which means the true number is actually higher.

If you define solo player no manual grouping, they are at most ~20% of the active playerbase.

[Akston-area-52]

@Qaccy-baelgun

The thing is, pretty much nobody is able to provide a decent reason for why allowing solo progression to go further than it currently does is a bad idea

Once you give a decent way for solo progression to be challenging.

[Cäpslöck-proudmoore]

@Akston-area-52

for solo progression to be challenging

Exactly, the solo gearing systems reward:difficulty ratio is already way above the rest of the end game.

[Qaccy-baelgun (Qaccy)]

@Critswalkin-cenarius

Anything you find challenging about a solo encounter can be made more difficult in a group setting simply by requiring more than 1 player to do it at the same time. And then there’s opportunities for actual coordination that exist in group content but not solo such as soccer boss from Ny’alotha, bomb hand offs from mythic crab boss in Sepulcher, etc. And to use a 5 man example: the last boss of Mechagon on hardmode essentially required voice coms to enter the code fast enough.

I’ll concede that there’s some truth to this, but I think it should also be acknowledged that coordination between players doesn’t inherently make group content more difficult than it solo. Like maybe a coordination mechanic isn’t that punishing to fail at, even if it’s ‘difficult’ to execute. If the stakes aren’t that high, does it still qualify as ‘difficult’? Essentially it comes down to tuning, which is adjustable both in solo and group settings. Maybe the same mechanics can’t necessarily be used in both, but the ones that are available in each can certainly be tuned up or down as needed.

@Lucavitha-area-52

First off, I would suggest getting into a guild of like minded individuals so that you can collectively engage in group content. This doesn’t have to mean Progging or getting KSM, but just seeing what you and your friends can accomplish together.

It’s fair to note that for me personally, it’s more about not being interested in pugging than it is grouping in general, but it’s also somewhat beside the point. That point being that I don’t necessarily agree with the notion that anyone should be ‘pushed’ into one or the other. That’s part of why I think they should all be more or less equal in potential, so that ‘pushing’ isn’t as much of a concern. This can even been seen at times between PvE/PvP players, whenever players who primarily engage with one system want something that the other system ends up getting. Lots of complaining happens then as well. It just boils down to players usually not liking it when they feel like the game (or other players) is trying to push them towards content they may not enjoy. I do see the irony of my argument here because to some players, solo content that’s challenging would also be something that some solo players wouldn’t enjoy and would thus be as alienating as group content probably is, but there would still be players who engage with it and I don’t think that some players not liking something should be a reason to not want it in the game. If that was part of the criteria for whether or not something should be implemented, the game wouldn’t have anything lol

@Lucavitha-area-52

First off, people would gravitate towards the classes that have the strongest independant survivability and damage output, so you’d see a massive influx of warlocks and hunters (due to their pets being pocket tanks and/or sacrifical goats), probably followed by classes with strong self healing abiltiies (Paladin, Shaman, Druid) with others having a harder time (rogue, DK, Warrior, Mage, priest).

Doesn’t this kind of already happen in high-level content? Class representation certainly isn’t equal, and Blizzard frequently gets taken to task over it. I kinda just consider these ‘imbalances’ as par for the course since it’s been part of the game for so long and I’m not sure Blizzard will ever be able to solve it. Carrying this point forward, I don’t see why potential ‘imbalance’ would be a reason to exclude new content since it’s already prevalent in the game and we’ve all kinda just accepted it.

[Eyebro-cenarius]

@Partyrock-kul-tiras

@Fauxstrasza-area-52

people will reach the end of progression path then they’ll be back to complaining.

That same dynamic is an issue whether it’s a group play or solo play. It’s not applicable to the topic at hand.

Gear is not the reward, your spot in your raid/community is the reward. That’s why theme park raid based mmo’s don’t cater to solo players. Solo players are an ephemeral crowd and you literally CANNOT keep them indefinitely happy. They will ALWAYS run out of content to do because they skip 90% of content either due to their lack of social skills or simply because they are so bad at the game or so low effort that no one wants them in their raid/group. Then they leave the game till you give them more content to play whatever new story based game that comes out on easy or story difficulty setting. That type of player isn’t worth the investment to create content for. They will play regardless of what content is made for them and they will leave no matter how much you try to make them happy so they will stay.

The serious raider knows that if they quit till the next tier, there’s always the chance that when they come back they will have been replaced. No one LIKES farming content unless you’re a BIS chaser (and most serious raiders aren’t gear oriented, they’re progression oriented). We farm cleared content because progression is a cycle of push (progression) and consolidate (gear and recruit). If you want a spot during push, you gotta pay your dues during consolidate phases… unless you’re just too amazing to replace or carry a raid guild that operates below your relative skill/ effort output. But I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s not your average solo player.

[Swarf-proudmoore]

If I had impressive thread making skills like OP, I wouldn’t hide them behind a throwaway level 10 classic character. Just sayin’

[Nìkto-zuljin (Nìkto)]

@Brewa-hyjal

So Blizzard abandoned the horrific visions model,

I loved doing the visions in BfA compared to Torghast.

[Eleusia-myzrael]

@Snozzy-thrall

Solo players choose to exclude themselves from the majority of the game while demanding the game cater to them.

The “majority of the game” that you speak of is not solo content, so it is the devs that are excluding solo players.

If you think solo players should just force themselves to do group content, then you are not understanding the concept of solo players and the reasons why they exist.

@Snozzy-thrall

Raiders are more likely to stay subbed therefore more annual income from raiders.

We don’t have specific data for this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if raiders are more likely to stay subbed because they always have a steady stream of quality content, and due to the nature of their content.

However, in terms of sheer potential numbers, there are more players that prefer M+, open world, or PvP as their primary endgame than pure raiders, so devs know that they have to keep raiding rewards slightly superior over everything else, or raiding metrics will fall dangerously low.

@Snozzy-thrall

Also numbers that Capslock shared showed that 70% of the playerbase has raid achievements from vault.

LFR counts for the base raid completion achievements and is indistinguishable from Normal for that metric, and LFR counts for the story campaign quest requiring a Razzy kill. The portion of players that raid in an organized group on a regular basis is probably much, much lower.

@Snozzy-thrall

Solo players are already the smallest minority in the game. Lower than even mythic raiders.

There is no set definition of “solo player”, but all available metrics point to the fact that there are more players who primary do queued content and open world content than players who do Normal+ raiding (let alone Mythic raiding).

[Snozzy-thrall]

@Eleusia-myzrael

The “majority of the game” that you speak of is not solo content, so it is the devs that are excluding solo players

Thanks captain obvious you are finally realziing this isnt a game designed for solo players.

@Eleusia-myzrael

If you think solo players should just force themselves to do group content, then you are not understanding the concept of solo players and the reasons why they exist.

Raiders and Key players are forced to do solo player activities in order to do the content they want. If you want the gear then you can do the forced stuff too

@Eleusia-myzrael

We don’t have specific data for this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if raiders are more likely to stay subbed because they always have a steady stream of quality content, and due to the nature of their content.

However, in terms of sheer potential numbers, there are more players that prefer M+, open world, or PvP as their primary endgame than pure raiders, so devs know that they have to keep raiding rewards slightly superior over everything else, or raiding metrics will fall dangerously low.

Actually Capslock provided numbers showing at best solo players make up at most 20%.

@Eleusia-myzrael

LFR counts for the base raid completion achievements and is indistinguishable from Normal for that metric, and LFR counts for the story campaign quest requiring a Razzy kill. The portion of players that raid in an organized group on a regular basis is probably much, much lower.

LFR is raiding

@Eleusia-myzrael

There is no set definition of “solo player”, but all available metrics point to the fact that there are more players who primary do queued content and open world content than players who do Normal+ raiding (let alone Mythic raiding)

Wrong on both counts.

Solo means zero group content, its literally in the definition of the word SOLO.

And false you are wrong as usual.

[Eleusia-myzrael]

@Snozzy-thrall

Raiders and Key players are forced to do solo player activities in order to do the content they want. If you want the gear then you can do the forced stuff too

Of course raid/M+ players can do solo content. But solo players can’t do raids/M+ because they don’t scale down to solo players.

@Snozzy-thrall

Actually Capslock provided numbers showing at best solo players make up at most 20%.

Solo players queue up for dungeons and raids for story campaign progress, contributing to metrics. Then they go back to being solo players or leave the expac because there is no worthwhile endgame.

Neither have you have proven that there isn’t a problem with solo content in DF, and that this problem doesn’t contribute to decreasing expac sales.

@Snozzy-thrall

LFR is raiding

Yes, but you can queue for it without an organized group. Raiding would likely have died without LFR post-MoP, and the game itself would likely have died by now if endgame consisted solely of raiding like WoD did.

LFR was introduced for a reason. M+ and open world gearing through world quests were also introduced for a reason. Think about it before you make any claims about how vital organized raiding is.

@Snozzy-thrall

Solo means zero group content, its literally in the definition of the word SOLO.

I’m glad you understand this concept.

So now I hope you finally understand that there is less content for solo players in DF than ever, now that the open world content with any substantial reward requires grouping.

[Kissmytotems-proudmoore (Kissmytotems)]

well according to the forums raiders are mad they gotta do keys and people who do keys don’t wanna raid either lol but keep on with the bs snozzy why should solo players wanna group when blizz could add solo instanced content? maybe i’m tired of grouping after 18 yrs imagine. people quit raiding cause they were forced forever then keys came and raiding took a hit. is that what y’all scared of forced grouping will die if there’s actual solo progression lol just admit it.

[Snozzy-thrall]

@Eleusia-myzrael

Of course raid/M+ players can do solo content.

You are missing the point where we are FORCED into it.

@Eleusia-myzrael

But solo players can’t do raids/M+ because they don’t scale down to solo players.

Nor should they. You want the gear go earn it.

@Eleusia-myzrael

Solo players queue up for dungeons and raids for story campaign progress, contributing to metrics. Then they go back to being solo players or leave the expac because there is no worthwhile endgame.

Then they arent solo players.

@Eleusia-myzrael

Neither have you have proven that there isn’t a problem with solo content in DF, and that this problem doesn’t contribute to decreasing expac sales.

I dont need to prove there is or isnt a problem with solo content. This game is designed to be played in groups.

@Eleusia-myzrael

Yes, but you can queue for it without an organized group. Raiding would likely have died without LFR post-MoP, and the game itself would likely have died by now if endgame consisted solely of raiding like WoD did

LOL no it weouldnt have. The people doing real raiding arent doing LFR.

@Eleusia-myzrael

LFR was introduced for a reason. M+ and open world gearing through world quests were also introduced for a reason. Think about it before you make any claims about how vital organized raiding is.

Yes, to give bad players a chance to see the story in the raid.

@Eleusia-myzrael

I’m glad you understand this concept.

So now I hope you finally understand that there is less content for solo players in DF than ever, now that the open world content with any substantial reward requires groupin

I dont care about solo players. If you want the gear get in a group. Hard concept is hard.