Ironically, this is one of the things that helped promote gaming. Ever played a table top game? Sure, there’s the “plan” that a GM has, but invariably, players will figure out other creative paths and methods to get to the conclusion. Some of the most boring and annoying games are the ones where your character is “on rails” where you are not allowed to explore, use environmental items, or otherwise ANYTHING other than what the programmer had in their head.
Exploiting is one thing, and should be reviewed and penalized as needed. But not everyone plays or enjoys the game in the same manner, nor should they. There have been way too many heavy handed measures that are nothing but blatant timesinks solely to make people take longer to do an activity for hours generated.
Yes, they can. And players have the same right to turn around and cancel their subscriptions. Remember the flying kerfluffle in WoD, and the immediate backlash and reversal after players started bailing en masse? Part of any business is also ensuring you keep an eye on the demand for your product.
And as much as I hate the Activision memes, there definitely has been a swing towards more grind and number crunching than actual enjoyment lately. BFA earned a lot of its scorn when the expansion first launched. They’ve done better with communication and fixing some stuff, but there’s plenty still to be addressed that should take precedent versus nitpicking and micromanaging particular playstyles.
I’m not missing the point and definitely not doing so intentionally. My bad if it seems that way. The reason I pose the question is because in my experience players will complain about anything that’s taken away, whether or not Blizzard has demonstrated reasonable and sound rationale for why they did it.
Are they failing to consider the players? It’s possible, but that’s not usually the read I get. What I usually see is what appears to be nothing more than the hair-trigger of player outrage being set off because some short cut was closed, and I’m just not sympathetic to that, no matter how fervently they cloak it with ‘but it’s fun’.
It’s partly because I don’t feel conveniences fit a functional and useful definition of ‘fun’, and partly because I know unjustified player outrage when I see it.
Yes the ‘who moved my cheese’ issue. My point wasn’t that blizz has to follow or be bound by the complaints. My point is that they do need to at least listen to the sentiment and think about it before doing something.
Having reasonable and sound rational is different than making a reasonable and sound change. Disabling an entire feature because of something non-game breaking is not a sound change. Torching a house to kill a spider may work, but it’s not exactly a sound course of action. As I stated in my original response to you, if they had taken a different route the push back would likely have been significantly less because it would have come across as much more thought out. The issue at hand is not the change per se, but the when, how, and why of it.
For example let’s take the shuriken combo prune. This is something they explained in the PTR, and had in the PTR for at least two weeks (I believe, I haven’t checked patch notes) prior to 8.1. Was there complaining: yes there was. I was among those that think tweaks and not a prune was a better course of action. That said by putting it in the PTR and having it very clearly be a thought out change the rage from the rogue community was much more subdued because they had time to figure out a way around it. Had blizz just sprung it on the community it would have likely blown up like the recent attempted XP locking change.
That’s you, please remember that not all players share your sentiments.
Some people only know how to respond in overused memes, like “fun detected”, or “small indie company”. Easier than having a coherent thought of one’s own, I suppose.
I think the only thing they need to be mindful of is timing. They’re obviously not in high regard right now because half-finished and unsatisfying game systems. With that in mind, I don’t necessarily think that this was something they could have reasonably anticipated.
Something they should have anticipated was that PvP quest that the Alliance got, and the likelihood of disabling the ability to complete it in a raid. Because players naturally find inventive ways to take the path of least resistance, failing to predict that players would form massive raids and deathball through zones to complete this quest is something that shouldn’t have required a hot-fix after the fact to ameliorate.
What are players saying when they insist that they should retain the ability to utilize this gimmick? To me, I only hear people who want things to be even easier, because while they claim they find the questing experience unfun, they aren’t doing anything to suggest changes to the content other than making it faster.
Whenever players argue for things being made faster and even more effortless, I’m turned off pretty quickly and I don’t have a lot of faith that it’s got anything at all to do with fun because I know the nature of players and how inventive they can be about doing as little as possible.
I don’t know what different route Blizzard can really take here, though. It’s evident that players don’t care about changing the quality of the quests, the immersiveness of the zones, or anything like that. It seems obvious that players just want things to be completed as quickly as possible, and that they will then veil what they really want out of the game with ‘you’re taking away my fun’.
My contention is that ‘fun detected’ arguments is dishonest argumentation because expedited content isn’t actually any different from a perspective of what you do and how you do it, and that the only thing changed is the pace.
That said, I do think pruning is awful. I don’t like choices or tools being removed because those actually have a direct impact on what you can do in the world that doesn’t always translate strictly into just speed. Shamans used to have a spell to bind Elemental units which really fit in with their class fantasy, but is removed. I don’t like that.
I’m pretty sure we don’t have to spell it out to know that this is true.
No, I do think they need to be more than mindful of timing. Whether they like it or not the players are part of their product, by that I mean the people that play the game and interact with each other as part of using it. That means that we, the players, are an integral part of the product they are selling; as such the sentiments and feelings of the player-base should not be simply ignored even if they aren’t acted on. Dismissing the players by saying “They have a legal right” is disingenuous at best and facetious at worst. It ignores the fact that this is an MMORPG and as previously stated, the players are literally part of the product and thus critical to the product’s success.
Honestly not going to disagree, in this case however I think this was already communicated via the changes to banning raids for elite quests that was made in 8.1; as such I was surprised it was allowed at all originally. In vanilla quests that could be completed in raid were actually specifically marked out as raid quests, other wise in general no quest could be completed in raid.
Where to start on this…
I don’t think it’s a gimmick as stated previously it’s a mistake that blizz made by not following end of expansion protocols concerning overpowered gear such as legendaries, full stop. The XP disable system has been in the game for ages for a variety of reasons many of which blizz outlined in their post. For a variety of reasons players use it even near top level to experience content differently than they might otherwise have, in doing so they accept that there will be a change to their experience. There will always be a market for people that want immediate gratification, that said that market is smaller than the groups of players that would have been impacted negatively by the change.
In your statement you’re not actually looking at the larger picture that there were and still is a majority of players that were using the feature for its intended purpose. This meant that the response from blizzard was disproportionate and out of line in contrast to the actual issue at hand. Furthermore questing is explicitly not the only way to level in the game. Blizzard has been abundantly clear they recognize that not everybody enjoys killing 30 tigers in Winterspring for six pelts. Leveling options from PvP, Islands, and Instances exist for this reason. As such people are going to guard and fight for the method they find the most enjoyable. Suggesting making changes to other content they have no intent to participate in is irrelevant and orthogonal to the situation and the discussion of the change.
In this case they didn’t want to make things easier per say, they wanted it not to be made harder than it already was. So to say they were asking for things to be made easier is disingenuous and misrepresenting the actual facts of the situation. Please recognize that not everybody wants to play WoW-souls, just because you may enjoy a high level of grind or difficulty does not mean everybody does. Quite a large chunk of the player-base is literally just here for the story, making it overly difficult for them to access that because a minority wants a challenge is detrimental to the health of the game as a whole.
I’m going to vehemently disagree, please go read the story forum. The players there are absolute zealots for the story, immersiveness, and quests. Be careful of painting the entire player-base with a single brush. There are many different groups within and they have many and very different interests. Pleas read what I wrote in response to the previous quote from your post as to feedback, in this case it’s irrelevant and orthogonal to the situation. As to why they say blizz is ‘taking away their fun’ because they are. Reminder that people have different ways of having fun in this game. Just because I don’t enjoy WPvP doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t and doesn’t love the rush it gives them; that doesn’t diminish either of our viewpoints, it just makes them different.
My contention is you’re ignoring the bigger picture because you seem to have difficulty identifying or understanding the sentiment of those complaining. I can’t tell you or suggest anything per se other than ‘think about it from their perspective’ although I doubt that is useful as not everybody is able or willing to do that.
I do have to spell it out, as I’ve said time and again through this post there seems to be a disconnect there. Remember that the player-base for wow is massive and incredibly diverse. There are players that play the game solely for the Auction House, the PvP, the Story, the Mythic+, the Raids, and yes even for just the battle pets (I have a guildie I know for a fact plays for this reason). Changes to the game can have a significant and severe impact on them, just because you or I are not impacted doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely painful for others.
oh yawn.
We pay for a service/product and DESERVE to NOT be yanked around by the company asking us to fork over our hard earned cash.
I spent well over $1000 on this game over the last 12 months friend. How about you?
I dont see complaints about exploits. I see them about decisions that Blizzard makes. What are you reading in here?
What theyve done is akin to a movie producer telling me what a fantastic movie theyve made and I should buy all the action figures and go see the movie twice…then when I do the movie is sorta crappy and boring.
And THEN I have folks like YOU telling me that I should pretend that its the best thing since sliced bread.
Sorry but it doesnt work that way.
If you dont want to see complaining about the crap they pull with the game about the only way to have that happen is for there to be NO online discussions about the game.
I even see a lot of complaining in the chat box when Im on, both in dungeons and when Im in cities.
I’m not dismissing players because Blizzard has a legal right to change their game (even if they do), I’m dismissing players because their arguments are ‘make this easier’ while cloaking it in a mock preservation of ‘fun’. Obviously a company needs to be mindful of the desires of their playerbase, but I don’t think they’re in the wrong to reinforce what certain tools and systems are meant for, and I think catering to players making bad faith arguments is a great way to let this game degrade even further. ?
Well since I’m not supposed to call it an exploit, what else do you want to call an unintended use of one system for a function outside of its original intention? For all intents and purpose, I’m referring to that as a ‘gimmick’ because easier to digest.
I’m glad you brought up the market for immediate gratification, because I think that’s what Blizzard needs to be very mindful of, and that arguments in favor of power-leveling gimmicks and flight are arguments made in favor of gratification, not fun.
It was never obvious to me that there was any contention from the player base about this specific point because it was drowned out by players who wanted it preserved for the unintended purpose of power-leveling lowbie characters.
The game isn’t and has never been WoW-Souls. I’m one of those players you just mentioned that only plays this game for story and I’m pretty low-geared compared to the average player (I don’t do mythics or raid, so this is an assumption). This game is easy, and inventive solutions to leveling aren’t being sought after to get around and impossible difficulty curve. They’re doing it to expedite the process in any way they can because that’s what players are prone to doing. They’ll take the path of least resistance each time, so to say that players just don’t want things to be harder than they are, when it’s pretty toothless as is, is you being disingenuous, not me.
Again, I’m one of those players, too. I ran an RP guild for the better part of about 4 years so I know exactly the crowd you’re describing and I’m also pretty familiar with their habits. I can absolutely speak in generalizations when I’m talking about player habits, and having different experiences and values doesn’t invalidate a single thing I’ve said. Players are inherently lazy and will chose the path with least effort when they can get away with it. This is common knowledge, and all you have to do is run enough Everbloom runs to see how many groups wanted to take the shortcut as opposed to the groups that did not. I have also said repeatedly that I’m speaking from my own perspective on player habits I’ve seen.
So no, I continue to say that players arguing for the preservation of conveniences and tricks that expedite what they consider the ‘slog’ of this game is not coming from a place of wanting to have fun, but about wanting to put in as little effort as possible.
It’s evident you and I have different ideas about the ‘big picture’ that seem to hinge on just how much catering a company should do for their consumers. I don’t think Blizzard has any reason to cater to any player arguing to make things easier than they already are, no matter how big they appear to be, how loud they make themselves seem, or how much they threaten to unsub. Research shows players hardly ever maintain these threats, anyway.
I’ve never dismissed that players have different values and different ways of getting enjoyment out of the game. My contention has only been, and only will be, that arguments for the preservation of convenience do not come from a place of wanting to have fun, but from a place of coursing through content as quickly as possible.
I’m willing to concede your perspective and we can try to steel-man one another’s arguments, but since you’re on your way out I’ll just leave it as an open invitation.
It’s a trade off. They didn’t want to shut them off right away. They could have easily just been heavy handed and have 8.0 kill legendaries along with the artifact weapons.